Deuterocanonical: Destroy Malevolence (Star Fox: Assault)
by Order and Chaos - Qui Iudicant
Summary: The Lylatian Alliance—a coalition of many planetary and star systems—has located the center of the Collective, and launched an all out assault against the cybernetic scourge to finally end the war. Unfortunately, it does not turn out well.
1. Begin the Fight

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**_Begin the Fight_**

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**_They sent forth men to battle,  
_****_But no such men return;  
_****_And home, to claim their welcome,  
_****_Come ashes in an urn._**

* * *

"Men, this is it. The big one. Where we finally strike against the enemy and on their own ground."

General Pepper stood before a contingent of Cornerian Defense Force soldiers—his hologram before thousands others like it—aboard the CDFS _Queen of_ _Lylat_ within their circular mess hall, the tables retracted into compact units in the floor. His face was grim, as it had been for the past half year. Those he addressed felt the same way. For months they had fought against Collective, defending every square centimeter of their homeworlds from the aliens, giving ground only through blood, sweat, and tears. Each had lost someone in this war, some all they had ever known, and all were ready to avenge them.

For this time, they were striking the brain of the Collective. Hard.

"This may be the last time I'll be speaking with some of you among us. So listen well," he went on, "because for every action we take in this operation, in this final battle to end the war, we are either one step closer to victory or defeat. Understood?"

"Aye!" came the chorus. It reverberated throughout the cavernous room, from the walls and the ceiling where hundreds more men and women stood at attention, looking toward their commander.

"The Collective has laid waste to our homes and our families, scoured our planets, and nearly murdered our star," he continued, starting to pace in order to reach everybody. "This time will be different. We shall be the ones attacking them—" (There came another shout of "Ayes" at this; he let them express themselves before continuing) "—But they are not like us. They have no one to be afraid for, nothing to lose except their lives—and we all know how they value the life of an individual," he added blandly. "But while we've been more or less successful against the outermost of the Collective's worlds, this time they will be relentless, even more so than they have been. We are attacking their Queen, in their innermost systems. So we hope. Only time will tell in the coming hours.

"So therefore I ask each and every one of you to be relentless as they are," he said, looking at one contingent as he passed. "Be as unmerciful as they are; spare nothing. Should one of you fall prey to their assimilation tactics, I want you to die, honorably. Should you find a comrade already infected, do not hesitate. If you do not, the enemy will have gained another soldier, perhaps one of you standing before me here, and they shall use you against your soldiers-in-arms. I assure you, our allies shall be doing the same."

Pepper paused for a moment, thinking. The gathered _anthropoi _shifted uneasily. This was a suicide operation; they all knew it. Their very orders were completely against the code of brotherhood; whispers went out among them, greenies anxious for what lay ahead, veterans reassuring them—and the other way 'round, young 'uns cheerfully boosting veterans' failing confidence.

Their commanding officer's eyes watched them shift, murmuring, from behind his implacable mask, betraying nothing; but he was afraid for them. Most would not be coming home, if at all. No bodies would be recovered, or even I.D. tags. Space was a harsh mistress.

Spatial combat was a brutal master.

"Star Fox, as you all know, shall be leading our side of the operation," Pepper went on slowly, starting to move again. Eyes and ears suddenly reverted forward at the name "Star Fox", and morale lifted noticeably. General Pepper noted that, and knew that what came next would not sit well with them. Within a few months that name had become famous through the Lylat and allied systems. Once a high-profile mercenary team it was now a crack-ops outfit. Many of the veterans standing here had fought underneath the leadership of Lieutenant McCloud, and were alive because of him. They all knew that name: would die for that name, even.

It was a shame he had to say this.

"They shall be leading the foremost of the van, just behind the strike squadrons. They will be the ones who'll penetrate into the enemy territory. But I want you all to know," and here his voice grew stern, yet wavered also. "I want you all to know that… no matter their reputation as skilled fighters, or soldiers famous for breaking the sieges of Sauria, Fichina, Katina and the rest, should they fall…" He trailed off. The soldiers, veteran and greenie alike, knew exactly what he meant.

"Good luck, men," he said instead, watching the huge electronic clock upon the wall behind them, "and may the Father protect you. Dismissed."

They saluted in unison, and dispersed almost immediately afterward. Nervous conservation sprang up.

Pepper watched them go before he was paged.

"_Sir_," the voice in his ear said. "_You're needed at the CIC._"

"I'll be there," he answered. Clicking off, he turned and went in the footsteps of his men. Within half an hour they would be reentering realspace and all hands were needed upon deck. Best if they got the drop on the Aparoids first if everyone was prepared.

Stepping outside the mess hall Pepper was greeted with the sight of the last people he wanted to see at such a critical moment.

"High Priestess," he said formally, beginning to move past them. "I'm afraid I can't chat right no—"

"An admirable speech, General," High Priestess Hoshiko replied, ignoring his attempts to brush her off. "You are an inspiration to your men." Her two SharpClaw guards, hulking in their jumpsuits, made it difficult for anybody to pass them in the corridor, and Pepper knew he couldn't get by them on his own without causing a fuss; he resigned himself talking.

"What do you want, Hoshiko? Surely it is not to congratulate my oratory skills?"

The petite SharpClaw woman smiled—a pretty and yet incongruous picture upon her reptilian features, considering she had not a hint of mammalian DNA in her. "Yes and no. I am being sincere in my compliments. You have shown yourself worthy of being a leader they will follow to the death. We may all meet our deaths here in this terribly important battle either way."

"Cut to the chase." He was getting impatient.

"Since you ask so nicely." Still holding her smile, Hoshiko took the General's arm, and gently led him down the corridor with her, guards bringing up the rear. "Do you remember why Sauria joined your Alliance?" she murmured, almost too quiet to hear over the ambient noise. "Why we pledged the remainder of our fleet to yours?"

"Do you need to bring that up?"

"What are you afraid of, General?"

"Wha—What? are you dense?" he asked, flustered.

"I said, why are you afraid? This is your ship, we are alone here, and surely we can talk about this."

"Not on the eve of battle."

High Priestess Hoshiko halted, forcing him to stop lest Pepper accidentally drag her along. Her face lost its benign smile; it looked predatory. "Multiple times throughout this journey—_four days_—have I attempted to seek you out for a little conversation. Would I rather have stayed aboard my own ships, or back home, instead? This is no trivial matter, General. Why are you avoiding me?"

Pepper took a chance and looked both ways down the corridors—difficult to do since one way was filled by SharpClaw muscle and meat—before leaning into her. Despite the violation of personal space and physical dominance by the General, she stood her ground.

"The Foundation is dead," he hissed. "We are not using this operation to bring that name to life, do you understand me?"

"Traitors are still living," she answered calmly. "You will help me regardless or not of your desire. The Foundation has slumbered long enough. We will rise again."

"That is all we have to talk about," Pepper hissed.

Straightening up, he turned and forced his way through the guards. They growled and made to close ranks, but a chirrup by Hoshiko made them relent. Pepper did not acknowledge her. Instead he disappeared down the corridor and to the CIC. The High Priestess beckoned and her guards followed her in the opposite direction. They had work to do.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

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"So, Fox, what's the scoop? Anything new?"

Falco Lombardi leaned languidly against the holographic-display-counter (HDC) in the center of the _Great Fox_'s control room, seemingly bored as he watched Fox horizontally pace away since the final Warp initializing nearly a day ago. Beside him was Katt Monroe, who took no notice of him as she poked through some holos on the display. She was checking, re-checking, and re-re-checking the schematics of the mothership's new systems out of a fit of nerves, and nothing seemed to satisfy her.

"I don't know, Falco, I just don't," came Fox's irritated response. "I've gotten nothing from Pepper since zero-three-hundred. No new changes in the plans have come. Not even the Ardan generals have contacted me with info."

"Like that'll ever happen," pipped in Slippy's voice from the too-tiny kitchenette next to Fox's left. "And only when Corneria's moons align together in a blackout, and y'all know how rare _that_ is."

"I hear you, Slip," Fox agreed, nodding distractedly as he finally decided walking did nothing to relieve his tension, and sat down instead. "Getting one of them to talk is like asking a rock to sing. If they'll even talk to mercenaries."

"Slip, we ain't near Corneria—hell, how many lightyears away are we, Katt?"

"Four hundred, and fast approaching the Homeworld; and stop interrupting me. I'm trying to re-calibrate the aft generators."

"Ag—?"

"Leave her alone, Falco," Fox said tiredly. "Let her be. Go play a game, or something. We'll be in battle soon. Let off that steam elsewhere." He put his head into his hands, wishing for the thousandth time—or was it the millionth?—that he was anywhere but on the verge of an interplanetary battle. This was his first outside of the system.

"The sooner the bett—_stop it Fay!_" came Miyu's screech, followed by a slap.

Opposite—actually above them, and upside-down)—and not too far away from the trio sat Miyu "Lynx" Wakahisa and Fay "Spaniel" Yukimura, both whiling away the time by, apparently, playing upon their 'pads or—as in the case of Fay—tickling her combat partner because she was bored. Their tiny couch, the only one left in the room after its transformation, made such things unavoidable; and Fay had been doing this steadily since they left Lylat, to Miyu's increasing annoyance she had just gave vent to. Now the angry lynx floated some feet off the floor with her fist raised while a giggling Fay pretended to cower.

"Don't push it," growled Miyu, "or I will." Fay merely laughed in her face, tears starting to stream from her eyes—droplets that were quickly reclaimed before they could damage sensitive electronics. "Girls, girls, please calm down," Falco said, leaving the HDC and deactivated his magnetic greaves to float over. "We don't need you to fight one another, not when the Aparoids are waitin—"

With a snarl Miyu suddenly whipped around and punched Falco squarely in the lower mandible as he neared her, sending the avian flying backwards. As he tried to reorient himself the lynx pushed off and caught him firmly by the scruff of his feathered neck. "Don't you dare tell me to calm down, you insolent bird," she hissed. "Or I'll make _you _stand down."

"Okay, okay, I hear ya," he grumbled, pushing her off him. "Don't need to hit me, ya know," he added. Getting no answer he floated from the grandly named "Communications-and-Ops Center", and went to his quarters. With a hiss Miyu also turned and left the room in a huff, undoubtedly going to heckle the unfortunate marines stationed aboard. Even their commander feared the lynx when she was in a mood. Undoubtedly they'd be floating into the room trying to escape shortly.

Katt merely sniffed in disgust as they vanished and carried on tinkering with the holos, grumbling something about "polarizing the neurotransmitters", or whatever that meant. Fox couldn't care what it was about; he too many things on his mind _to _care. If only there was something to take away the sensation of _waiting _then he would feel fine. Sadly, this was not the case.

The Communications-and-Ops Center had formerly been the crew's lounge, full of all sorts of distractions and entertainment that could have relieved the stress. But it was the only place big enough for the necessary operations—apart from the central hanger now holding some fifty specially-made Arwing, Mark VIII-class fighters for the coming fight—that were to take place. It was also in the center of the ship moreover, safe from missiles, phaser-strikes, kinetic-weaponry or whatever else the Collective threw at them: so everything had been stripped down and decentralized, with multiple redundant systems everywhere until there was hardly room to breathe, let alone move or relax.

Should Star Fox manage to survive the coming battle, and end the war completely—hoping that the bioelectronic-virial program Beltino Toad had made would destroy the menace permanently—they'd get a new ship complete with larger rooms and many like them, complete with centrifuges so they wouldn't have to constantly use these blasted magnetic greaves. Or enough room so that should another emergency arise the lounge would be spared and three others would be used for Command instead. Oh the joys of a proper command ship.

As Miyu and Falco departed it hardly made an impression on Fox, who knew stress had that effect of them. He was dealing with it on a near-constant basis now, constantly trying to rein in his temper, for being the commander of his own platoon had no perks aside from more responsibility, completely unacceptable for one who, months ago, had been a simple paramilitary leader. Not even the upgrades to the _Great Fox_, while excellent enough in their own right, were perks enough. It only meant more firepower, more shielding, and more armor—all of it redundant and needing more men than he could possibly command. He hated being in charge of anything important, of anything that had numerous redundancies; this was _exactly _the reason why he rejected a position within the Cornerian military.

But, then again, it may be that very redundancy would save their skins many times over in this battle. It had to. The _Great Fox_ may not be a battleship or a destroyer, but it could hold its own against a few of the Collective's warships, as demonstrated in the preliminary campaigns leading to this one. Oh for the days when everything was merely simpler—

"_Lieutenant McCloud,_" chimed in R.O.B.-64's metallic voice, "_Aparoid system within seven light minutes._"

So it was now time. Too soon. Not even the four day voyage through hyperspace had elevated the tension; it had only increased it.

He lifted his wrist-communicator to his mouth and said, "R.O.B., when is the estimated time of arrival?" He noticed Katt's ears perk up.

"_Three light minutes._"

"Thank you, R.O.B.," he replied, then shut it off. Fox stood and turned to where his team lay sprawled out all over the former lounge. Slippy was in the kitchenette behind and to his left; Miyu and Falco in their respective rooms, blowing off steam; Fay walking around on her hands, delighted at all the tricks she could do in zero-g; Katt doing her own thing, perhaps preparing for what would come; Krystal somewhere in the tiny library behind Fay's couch where it curved along with the wall, engrossed in a book; and Peppy was with R.O.B..

The marines were waiting in their own room, along with the pilots, and the rest of the crew were elsewhere making sure things were prepped and readied. No doubt their commanders were waiting for the same signal he just received—'twas his duty to inform them. He sighed. All of them unaware that the time was now. Well, maybe except for Katt. She was always on top of things like this.

Fox lifted his communicator and opened a channel to the commanders and said: "Team, it is time."

Immediately Star Fox sprang into action, and the room transformed into a hive. Fay righted herself and flew off to get the members-in-absentee while Slippy "swam" over to Katt as she began calling up multiple screens and more holos of the ship. Krystal tumbled out of the library, blaster holstered and the staff used on Sauria wrapped around her back, heading for the Arwings. Fox noted her armed readiness as she disappeared with approval before he turned for the bridge.

A short while later—in reality, a simple flight through the corridor and two blast-doors—he entered the bridge (or Combat Information Center, a.k.a. CIC) at the front of the ship. Unlike the newer ships, Star Fox was stuck with having the bridge still prominently featured on the bow, bespeaking it as an older model. The reason why was simple: it cost too much time—and, bizarrely, money—to reroute all the systems if they moved the CIC elsewhere. The viewscreens were costly, and limited; the new touchscreen modules incompatible with the ship computer; the various matrixes for redundant AI backups so advanced it was like they were alien tech—and everything else too plain crazy to even contemplate for his stressed out brain.

_Newer ship after the war most definitely_, he concluded. The best they could do was outfit the entire front of the _Great Fox _with extremely durable adamantium plating lent to them by the Ardans; it was so strong that a comet couldn't punch a hole through when they were in hyperspace unshielded. That protection would do them good in battle anyway.

Entering, Fox looked around, hoping they got his message. Off to starboard Fara Phoenix was responding to messages as fast as they appeared, typing away furiously as if her life depended upon it. To port Peppy was engaging the defensive systems to activate as soon as they came out of hyperspace, while R.O.B.-64 calmly navigated the ship as he always did with compliance and serenity.

The great windows showed nothing outside except a haze of black, the result of traveling so fast that not even light could slow down enough to _see _it—but Fox knew that they were flanked by two massive Ardan battlecruisers, dwarfing the tiny Dreadnought-class battleship as a pair of _hatzegopteryx _dinos would a little bird, ready to be the first out of the battlefield. When battle came those same windows would be closed and stay that way until hostilities had ceased.

"Peppy, the crews have been informed and will launch as soon as we arrive," he reported. "Anything show up on the scanners?"

"Nothing," came the hare's terse reply. "Everything's silent."

"Anything from the Ardans?"

"Negative, just a flurry of communications," pipped Fara, head still hunched over her screen. "They're going ballistic. I envy those blokes stuck with talking to the Klingon and Romulans. At least _they _speak a language we know."

Fox nodded. "Roger that." He didn't envy her job. He never quite managed to get the hang of diplomacy.

"_All hands, prepare to disengage,_" came Katt's voice over the intercom. "_Prepare for inertia-shock._"

Inertia-shock was what a starship underwent when appearing back into realspace, the illusion of movement from the moment of their Warp-jumping to reappearance. Fox strapped himself in, preparing to be thrown forward as if he were rocketing backwards in an atmosphere. Peppy and Fara did the same too; R.O.B. merely locked his legs into place and continued on as before, becoming a part of the ship's structure. The extra armor and shielding would be more than enough to stabilize the reaction, and prevent the ship from flying apart. Never before in its long history had the _Great __Fox _been in hyperspace this long, and neither was it built that way. But the technicians had made sure everything was fit for interstellar flight.

And battle.

"_3…_" came the countdown, "_2… 1… _disengage!"

Fox suddenly felt his chest constrict as the ship began to "decelerate"—then shot forward and was abruptly halted by his straps as the "reality" of realspace slammed into him. The stars' luminosity flared back into existence, only to be shut out moments later as the massive hulks of the Ardan ships appeared on either side of the windows.

"_The fleet has arrived._"

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

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A/N: _The story title comes from the _Star Wars: The Clone Wars_ episode (Season 1, if you're interested) of the same name. This is set near the end of Star Fox Assault, right where they're attack the Aparoid Homeworld, only with a major twist to it. Don't be afraid to give critiques like you do._

_Fire away!_


	2. Begin the Fight—II

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**_Begin the Fight_**—**_II_**

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**_Immortal_**—**Two Steps From Hell**—(YouTube, AmazonMP3, Spotify, IraBox, iTunes)—YouTube: **Thomas Bergersen - Immortal Extended **(Epic Music Mix)

_**Pandora's Heaven**_—**Immediate Music**—(YouTube, AmazonMP3, Spotify, Google Play, iTunes, Shazam, SoundCloud)—YouTube: **Pandora's Heaven Extended Remix - Immediate Music **(MandalorSkyrd)

* * *

**_The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows._**

* * *

The Kuiper belts of various star systems were always different, in composition, in number, in inhabitants: but each shared a commonality—they were all unilaterally an extreme distance of several hundred astronomical units from their star. Distances between asteroids—often no larger than a few centimeters—were just as astronomical, taking days for a single ray of light to reach one rock to another. Most of these weren't even made of rock but a mixture of ice and dust, comets captured over the centuries and broken up by gravitational forces or collision with other belt-bodies.

A lone metallic object drifted past one such conglomerate of ices and minerals. It glowed softly, two long metal arms extended out from which fanned a number of reflective plates and devices. Some of these looked cruel.

In the distance a point of light no larger than a baseball—differentiated from an even smaller point only in size and brightness—hovered in silence. That baseball-sized point was in actuality an enormous Jovian world with massive dust and ice rings and a number of satellites, some not entirely natural; and that lone metal object answered to the Jovian—one part of a vast networked system of countless war satellites and defense installations, an early warning system.

Days, weeks, would pass before anything of interest showed up on the robot's scanners—a nearby comet, streaking at impressive speeds; faint distortions of sunlight from faraway stars; sometimes even a ship or two. The latter were always noted, scanned, and then given no heed. Sometimes it would be a repair vessel, from the Jovian, on its bimonthly checks. Oftentimes it was a transport, gigantic and impressive, lumbering past before vanishing with a distortion of spacetime to somewhere out in the reaches of the Void—sometimes it would be the opposite, a sleek, swift courier ship dropping in from hyperspace.

All of these were few and far infrequent.

So when a gigantic spatial distortion appeared on the scans—which both physically erased the starlight and gave out an enormous flow of heat and energy, like an invisible supernova had teleported to this sector of space—without so much as a warning, the robot's mind, naturally, interpreted this as an aberrant situation. It sent signal after signal back to the Jovian, increasing in frequency as numerous ships started dropping in with flashes of unlight. They ignored the routine identification messages sent by the satellite, pressing deeper onward in the system; one of them, heedless of what was in its path, smashed the robot and its companion asteroid to a thousand pieces of glowing dust.

It would be all too easy to consider this as just another accident, or malfunction, except that it was not. One, the robot had recently been checked _and_ it was good to run for a few more local years before it needed replacement; two, a large number of other robots over a vast displacement of the Kuiper belt reported the exact same anomaly, many winking out moments after they transmitted; and three, no ships were scheduled to come to this area of space—it was restricted, moreover.

The Jovian, distant and far removed from the current proceedings, took notice of the loss of its charges, paged them quietly, and, failing to receive an answer, shifted to the highest level of alert possible. Defensive interceptors were fueled, launched; sleeping warships were awakened; weapons platforms powered on and faced their cannons toward the breached sector.

They were, quite understandably, under attack.

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

Emerging from hyperspace was the grand armada of the Alliance, the largest collection of ships gathered since the closing days of the Great War nearly two decades prior. Hundreds of battlestars popped into existence like meteors burning through a thick atmosphere, their main engines reigniting after their day-long sojourn in compressed space.

First came the forward strike ships—small destroyers and patrol boats, with an oversized Dominion battlecruiser or four bringing up the rear—led by the swan-white _Great Fox_. Next came the main force, headed mostly by the Klingon-Romulan Royal Defense Forces, made up of numerous warships resembling metallic hawks, followed by other representatives of the Alliance. Last of all came the Lylat Coalition, a collection of Lylat's nations and finest, headed by the awesome _Queen of Lylat_, a battleship/carrier at least the size of a Dominion vessel.

Bringing up the rear, above and below, came the rest of the Dominion fleets—four hundred thousand oval, cylindrical ships, together making up a fourth of the Alliance yet over half its firepower. Smaller flashes of light started, tiner vessels discharging from their carriers, falling into complex formations around and about the fleet. Of course, the dimensions of space would prevent a full enclosure, naturally, but this was only the preliminary stage. Within a couple hundred light-minutes (a distance that was decreasing rapidly with deacceleration) they would be upon and dispersed amongst the enemy.

Watching through the viewscreen, hundreds of fightercraft flying out beyond the fleet, General Pepper felt distracted. In the span of only a few minutes the High Priestess had managed to shake his resolve. It was inconceivable, that moments ago he was preparing himself and everyone for a fiery end. Now… now…

He felt almost like a fool.

Who was she to bring up the past like it still mattered? he thought angrily, trying to find an outlet. It was over and done with—it had no bearing or relevance with the current fight, not unless former foes had somehow ensconced themselves within the Collective for decades and had chosen to reveal themselves now. _That _in itself was an impossibility; the Collective concerned itself with nothing outside its borders, not unless it was—or felt—threatened by something, be it a buffer nation or the Dominion.

Actually, now that he thought about it, what _had _caused the Collective to attack Lylat anyhow? Pepper's mind drifted back to the beginning of it all, back when mad Andrew and his pathetic ragtag bunch of Androssians attempted to start an insurrection. That little affair had ended quickly—Corneria had sent a large fleet to take him out, incidentally with Star Fox helping. Then an alien vessel appeared out of nowhere, landed on Andrew's ship, 'vaped it in a single burst, and the current war was begun in earnest.

Whatever that thing was made of it took the entire Cornerian fleet—backed up with Zonessan axillaries—to blast it into smithereens. Even then parts of the biomechanical machine had survived, long enough for a team to extract them from Fortuna's radioactive surface. Before they could analyse it, though, word had come from Katina that an alien fleet had arrived, and there was no time.

When Sauria was attacked Corneria realized they needed help, and sent out a distress call. Help they received—in the form of the entire Galactic community. First on the scene was the Dominion of Arda, an impossibly ancient empire of "space elves", then had come the Klingon-Romulan Kingdom followed by the Star Republic and others. As Lylat was straddling the borders between Known Space and the Core it was natural to congregate there and group up for counter-invasion. Thus they launched attack after attack, searing through Collective defenses until they learned who was responsible for assault. Apparently one of many Aparoid "queens" was responsible, who had delusions of grandeur for expansion. She responded to diplomacy with guns, and refused to listen; relentlessly and tirelessly, the new Alliance attacked and attacked, pushing back her forces, until all that remained was the Homeworld—the center of Aparoid operations, her throne.

That was many months ago. Hard to believe it, really; felt like years.

Ah well, that was all there was to it. The historians would figure this one out later. They had a battle to win—by his projection, according to the debriefing, the battle would take no more than a few days, tops. Even if it had been a surprise attack the Collective was a formidable creature to challenge. By all analysis, they were as old, or older than, the Dominion—and that meant they had access to the same technologies. Gravitic technology, which allowed for near instantaneous travel through hyperspace without spending more than a few minutes or even seconds inside. Compared to Lylat, who had just reached the interstellar stage, they were like unto gods.

"General," Captain Shears said. "We've deployed the defensive systems and raised the shields. On standby for your signal."

Pepper nodded in answer. "Send word to Lieutenant McCloud and Captain Gil-galad that they may begin the charge."

"Sir."

"Captain," called a technician, "we're getting readings from the forward ships. A defensive screen's forming from the nearby Jovian to block our path to the Homeworld—numerous alien ships are breaching the atmosphere, weapons-satellites aligning themselves to our position, and the first shatternukes are headed to our frontline ships. The Dominion _Eru Ilúvatar_ has reported the same."

_So it begins, _Pepper thought grimly.

"Acknowledged," Captain Shears. "Begin penetration."

How gravitics worked fascinated Pepper. For as long as Lylatian civilization existed this technology had always remained out of their reach. It was less of a matter of technological achievement than it was of operation. Gravitics appeared to obey no laws of observable physics that he could see, and Dominion scientists had been reluctant to share their work, among other things.

What happened, in essence, is that the ship preparing to make a jump compressed space before and around it, and "inflated" space behind. This took incredible amounts of energy, normally. Somehow, ambient gravity would be manipulated to "force" the reaction instead of burning out twenty stars—the compression happened then, the ship was squeezed through—and then an incalculable span of time would pass before they "popped" onto the other side. Mission clock said they were in hyperspace for a day or more; the longest period recorded was several months. In realspace it could be anytime from a few seconds later to a year; any longer, and the ones jumping would then essentially be time-traveling. Always forward, of course. The amount of distance depended on the coordinates inputted into a multidimensional map, and blind jumping was never encouraged.

This process built up heat, like everything else operating in space. There was no atmosphere to vent heat, no proper convection. So to compensate Lylat built gigantic wings which served dual purpose of being transatmospheric and radiators. They also served as convenient frames for the warp drive. Every new ship that was constructed or retrofitted for interstellar flight had one, including the _Queen_.

What the Dominion did he had not the slightest. Everything about them was a mystery—what he would see in this battle would be the first time he saw their military doctrines in action. He was curious, how they radiated heat, how they guided their fighterships, what formations they used, hell, even what communications they used. He heard rumours they could communicate faster than light, something something quantum entanglement or whatever jargon that was.

"General!"

Startled he snapped back to reality. "Yes, what is it?"

"We got word back from Lieutenant McCloud. They're launching the first assault; Dominion ships have breached the first screens, and the Homeworld is in sight."

"Good. Prepare for general assault."

The alarm klaxons sounded as the first of the shatternukes reached them, and the phaser defenses roared—silently—into action, blasting them to atomic particles before they hit. The viewscreens switched from monitoring all sectors of space to those directly in front. Bright flashes of soundless light flared into existence as the missiles missed by the phasers slammed into shielding, screens dimming to filter out the worst of the flares. It would be a long time before the armor itself was struck by them, but that would come all too soon as power would be redirected to deal with breaches.

General Pepper looked at his watch, an old relic from the Great War: the time read _05:34_. Pulling out an old pair of aviator shades, he put them on, electronic displays lightening up.

"It's show time," he said.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

"_All fighters, prepare for launch. All fighters, prepare for launch,_" rolled R.O.B.'s monotonous voice throughout the _Great Fox_ hangar-bay as crews raced for their craft.

Repair-robots congregated around Arwings to make last minute adjustments and modifications, pilots clamoring to get inside. Armor-plating was removed, re-installed, and welded back on in quick succession. Life-support systems were checked for the final time before they went out into battle; the ion-thrusters all examined one last time (the last thing anyone wanted was for a gyro-rocket to malfunction and send them hurtling to their death); and weapons-systems calibrated again to ensure they would not fail.

Miyu jammed her helmet on with one hand as she vaulted two robots and into her spacecraft. Zero-g made that easy to accomplish, for as deep as it was in the ship, the hangar-bay had no gyroscope installed. The plus side was that heavy equipment was easier to lift—ignoring the fact that mass stayed the same in zero-g even without external forces (such as gravity or others) holding it down—and impossible feats of athleticism could be performed. The downside was continuous muscle and bone-deterioration the longer one stayed in zero-g, plus an host of other issues which wreaked havoc on the _anthropinos_ body, so it was necessary to stay in the crew-sections when not on duty, constantly using the centrifuges to keep oneself in shape.

She did her pre-flight check diagnostics once settled into her craft, was satisfied that all worked well, and gave a thumbs up to the deck-officer. The rabbit nodded, signaling the crane-operator to place her ship in its launch-tube. Her cockpit canopy lowered itself around her and sealed itself into place, becoming one with the ship's armor-plating. Miyu adjusted her helmet into place, knowing that it was her lifeline should she be forced to eject, and clipped on her breather. Not that it mattered—death was usually instantaneous—but that didn't stop her from making sure it was tightened on. Death by suffocation in her own fightercraft was not particularly high on her list of "_ways to die_".

A green light together with a minute _beep_ flashed on, just as an abrupt _jolt _in her stomach indicated her ship had been grabbed by the crane. The sensation of moving sideways was only for a moment before another _jolt _told her her fighter was in the launch-tube, packed in like a can of whipped-cream. Or like a torpedo. The lynx's body tensed in anticipation for the launching as her seat-straps wrapped themselves around her, to brace her for the sudden and temporary forces that would exert extreme pressures during launch. She exhaled each time she felt, through her ship's frame, the sudden _thudding _of other Arwings being blasted out into space.

It was exactly like riding a roller-coaster, Miyu thought: the same tension of expectation as she rode up the steep incline centimeter by centimeter, the sudden _jolt _as it stopped right at the very top—from her vantage point at the very front of the coaster Miyu could see the whole of the amusement park below—and finally, the eventual release downwards followed by a rush of sheer ecstasy of terror and pleasure as the ride shot down the 90° angle slope and raced throughout the twisting, looping track. The downside to it all was how short it felt—but it was worth it.

Right now it was the waiting part. She always disliked it because it made her stomach twist up in knots, and if she'd eaten anything it always made her want to puke. It was maddening, all this waiting. Each time the others were launched it felt very anticlimactic, only to begin over again when she realized it wasn't her. She was an atmospheric interceptor, not a space-pilot.

"_Miyu?_"

She exhaled again, surprised. "Yes, Fay?" she answered.

"_Are—Are you mad at me?_"

"Um… why are you asking me this?" she inquired.

"_I__… I don't know. I mean… when I was tickling you, and all that._" Fay sounded for all the world like a scared girl, even through the transmitter. "_I don't wanna die__… knowing that you're angry at me._"

"Oh, come now," Miyu said, restraining a laugh for the canine's sake, "I was afflicted by nerves. I didn't mean any of it. Of course I'm not mad at you."

"_Just__… just suppose that if there were an__—an afterlife, I wouldn't want to be there, knowing I had made you angry._"

"Shhhh…" Miyu hushed her. "It's all right, Fay, really it is. I am not mad at you, why would I?'

"_Just__… I'm scared. Please, are you mad at me? I don't want you mad at me._"

"Fay, you have not made me angry," she said patiently.

"_I'm sorry, Miyu,_" the other contritely said.

"I forgive you, Fay," Miyu said soothingly, feeling another _thudding _as another Arwing was launched. "I forgive you."

"_Thank you, Miyu,_" Fay answered, sounding relieved. "_I'll buy you a drink when this is over._"

"Last one to kill a Krazoa foots the bill," Miyu answered with a grin, recalling an old childhood game they used to play together, freedom fighters versus the evil, oppressive Krazoa overlords. Fay's answer was lost when the launcher suddenly kicked into action and blasted Miyu's ship outside. Inertia pressed her body forcefully against her seat, feeling as if stuck between a rock and a hard place. Despite that there was no "wind" blasting at her face, Miyu felt her eyeballs being forced backwards into her skull.

Her central viewscreen showed a triangular tunnel lined with lights—ending in a hole of pitch-black darkness—rapidly shooting by, as the catapult sent Miyu's Arwing forward with incredible speed outward into space. It was too soon compared with the long—yet not long—waiting. Too soon!

Then the Arwing was floating. All sensation left her—weightlessness took hold, stopped only by her straps around her legs and torso, which grew ever more rigid to keep her steady. And the screens all around her—central, upper, starboard, port, and two smaller, tertiary ones—showed the battlefield insofar as it related to her fighter-craft, along with all of her craft's diagnostics. Right now they focused on the strike-squadrons, the foremost of the attacking wave. Even though she couldn't see it the Homeworld was before them, and it would appear before she knew it.

Miyu gripped the controls and ordered the ship forward—an illusion, as there was nothing to indicate "forward" or "backwards" in a vacuum—to its position in the fighter formation. The ship frame shuddered as inertia kicked in, rockets changing direction. The formation was a simple X with a wider outrider O circling it. Purely two-dimensional, but necessary as the enemy was in front of them. There would be time for fancier formations later, when the Collective was everywhere around them.

A chime on a port computer-interface, complete with yellow light, told her that Fay was behind and above her, diagonally. One of the outriders.

"Hiya girl," Miyu said. "Those chariots keeping you safe?"

"_Heck yeah, they are!_" came the exuberant reply. "_They really know what they're doing. I've seen nothing like this before._"

"You bet, they've been in space for longer than we have. They know the drill. And they are very cute, too," she added mischievously.

"_Oh come now, Miyu, don't go thinking of men until we're done fighting!_" Fay chided her. "_And remember who you're speaking of—they don't like it! Although I'll admit—_"

"And you're one to talk?!" she retorted disbelievingly, rolling her eyes. The canine was even worse a flirt than she was. Just then the squad-leader interrupted:

"_All wings report in. Blue Leader standing by._"

"Blue 5, standing by," Miyu affirmed, listening to the others systematically answering:

"_Blue 10, standing by._"

"_Blue 7, standing by._"

"_Blue 3, standing by._" (_That would be Fay,_ she thought.)

"_Blue 6, standing by._"

"_Blue 14, standing by._"

When the Allies eventually chimed in, after the rest had identified themselves, Miyu had to restrain a chuckle because their callsigns were so absurd.

"_Blue Button, standing by._"

"_Blue Foxx, standing by_."

"_Big Blue, sanding by_."

Of course, she thought pragmatically, unique callsigns were what distinguished them from one another, not just merely numbered ones like Cornerian callsigns. There were two classes of fightercraft in this section of the squad—fighterwing, really, the multinational Blue Wing—Arwings and Chariots, the latter of which resembled a four-pointed star with engines on the tips.

Unlike the movies or videogames, one couldn't tell who your friend was just by looking at them. There was no colored indicators, no nametags or health bars floating above their ship. All you had to rely on was the computer and the assurance that the guy beside you was friendly, even if you couldn't see him. There was no horizon in space—it all extended outward forever in all directions, and one could only see for so far in the pitch blackness of the Void. Speaking of which, where was Fox? Wasn't he supposed to be leader of Blue Wing…?

"_Blue October, standing by_."

"_Blue Elf, standing by._"

"_Blue Caboose, standing by._"

Miyu could hear Fay's open laughter over the intercom followed by other _anthropoi._ For all of certain of their Allies' no-nonsense and prudish behaviors, they sometimes had no concept of the idea of dignity. It was either willful blindness or else even a rock had to give in certain situations. The laughter was infectious, and under the circumstances the Cornerian _anthropoi _couldn't be blamed for it. Even she gave in and let out a chuckle too. She remembered a saying somewhere that said "_let us be merry, for tomorrow we die_." Tomorrow was upon them right now.

The thought sobered her up.

"_Blue Tooth, standing by,_" came in the last pilot.

"_All fighters prepare for attack,_" came the leader's instructions. "_First enemy waves coming in._"

"_Star Fox, follow his lead. We're unified for the opening stages,_" Fox's voice chimed in Miyu's headset. She nodded reflexively.

She adjusted her fighter's speed to match with the others, noting how like it _was_ to playing a video game, like Galaga. That thought brought her to mind of a popular science-fiction book series, of how a group of child-generals defeated an insectoid-like alien race through the means, unknowingly, of a video-game (which was not Galaga). How she wished something like that could happen now…

Actually, it made no difference. This was real, she was the one fighting while all of the generals were back commanding the fleets, and even though it was the stuff that made the adrenaline run, and even more intense than a video game…

…but there was no "respawn".

Vibration came as pulses of energy-weapons and explosions filled space around her.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

Many hundreds of thousands kilometers off to the Alliance's starboard, around the Jovian—a green-blue giant with oversized rings and few natural satellites—hovered several orbital installations that were the defense network's centerpiece. Within the giant were many more structures which served as factories and refineries, to create and maintain the Aparoid war machine for this star system, and they boiled, like the surrounding planetary storms, but with artificial activity.

Breaching the hydrocarbon atmosphere were thousands of smaller ships, flowing in waves and ripples as if blown by a strong wind, contrasting with orderly Alliance formations. Like flying wings in design, these were each controlled by a central intelligence which answered to the authority of a supreme mind—the Aparoid version of a squad and its leader. When the body was destroyed the intelligence would be recalled and "reincarnated" inside a new frame. Thus equipped the reborn fighter would hunt down and destroyed the one which ended it. Phasers could rarely target them, their energy signatures too numerous and confusing for the computer; torpedoes and missiles failed to stay locked on; only kinetic weapons' fire could effectively neutralize them.

Following behind were other, slower ships. Like the one which laid waste to Lylat's insurgents and kickstarted the war these resembled sea creatures in design—long cuttlebone/mantle body between an hundred sixty meters to two kilometers, numerous arms tipped with weaponry, and equipped with gravitic drives—and just like then they prepared for war. Opening their arms like a giant, octopus-esque flower, beams glowing in their center, they aligned themselves while their smaller brethren raced outwards. As the first of the Alliance fighterwings came into their firing solutions the artificial squids unleashed their awesome firepower, blasting away either at distant warships or the deadly shatternuke, a nuclear weapon comprised of many active warheads, capable of knocking out an entire ship.

The Alliance attacked them above the Jovian ring, close to a minor moon, and soon wreckage joined it as ships broke apart in atomic displays of destruction. Most numerous were the fightercraft, the aliens in particular as they committed suicide in their seemingly fanatic desire to end the enemy; it was all the Alliance fighters could do to stay alive. Yet in spite of all the elaborate explosions and fearsome firepower it was conducted in silence. Not complete silence, no; radio traffic was a buzz and so were more exotic forms of communication. But silence it was, for most _anthropoi _lacked the means to hear anything in a vacuum, for there was no gaseous medium to transfer sound.

That suited Wolf O'Donnell perfectly. This was his kind of place, a special home to him really. Ordinary _anthropoi _disliked being out in space for extended periods of time, whether in single-piloted craft or multi-personnel cruisers, found it disturbing and strange.

Not for him. He relished it. He didn't mind being out here all alone. It matched his personality, in a way. He liked the dark, though not as others would think—he viewed it in a companionable sort of way, like a friend. At times he'd jokingly refer to the darkness of space as an "unofficial" member of Star Wolf. He knew how to use the darkness of vacuum to his advantage, how to hide, how to fight. It was traits like these that made him a valuable member to both Andross and now the Alliance.

Space was a kind mistress to him.

Particularly now when his very life depended upon it. These Aparoid things were nothing like he'd ever faced before: nothing. They didn't think the way he expected; they moved differently, reacted differently. That made tricking them, outguessing them harder to do.

As he wheeled "above" the moon's surface, a trio of flying wings pursuing him, he looked for a solution he could use to be rid of them. Spotting one between a Klingon cruiser and one of those Aparoid carriers that looked like a starfish he dove for it; as expected the Aparoids following copied the maneuver, chasing him. Going into a spin—to break locks—Wolf tumbled through the firing solution like a divine wind. His pursuers were not so lucky, going up in puffs of plasma.

Space was indeed a kind mistress, even if she were a flighty one.

Far below him, where the moon's gravity broke up the dust rings in its continuous rotations around the Jovian, loomed several warships in squads of three, deaccelerating and pointing upwards. Taking advantage of the thicker dust they primed their guns for their unsuspecting targets—a collection of defense stations and satellites whose long range cannons, nasty things which propelled metal slugs at fantastic speeds, proved an annoyance to passing Alliance battleships.

The enemy spotted them, finally, but it was too late; and as aliens raced downward, shields blowing aside the dust, the warships fired their primary beam weapons. Atomic power blasted upwards, punching through force barriers and vaporizing armors. Several identical blasts fired in a continuous repetitions ensured the stations' complete destruction; small fireballs, brief in their lives, dominated the warzone above before fading into a cooling mass of twisted metal.

Wolf observed the end of Aparoid engineering with a dispassionate eye, noting with approval the tactics involved once he saw Alliance ships breach the broken dust rings. That was the kind of thing he'd have done. Turning his attention back to the battle at hand, he selected a flying wing pursuing an Alliance ship and zoomed after. Targeting reticles locked he let loose.

The alien disintegrated.

Wolf opened a channel. "You're slipping," he chided. "That thing was about to end you. Another moment and you and I wouldn't be having this conversation."

The radio barked. "_Yeah, thanks Wolf. I nearly had him but he was difficult. I'm surprised he stuck to me this long._"

"I already tried that, Panther. They don't think like the Cornerians or even the invading Aparoids of before. No, we must exercise caution if we're to see this through and get paid."

Panther laughed. "_Come on, Wolf, don't you ever think about anything else? Is money the only motivation?_" the mercenary asked.

Wolf thought for a moment. "Yes, I guess it is. I live and breathe the credit."

"_Haven't you considered that we're not fighting our usual battle but one where _everything _is trying to kill us? These Aparoids are ruthless._"

"You've been listening to the General's pep talk." Wolf was dismissive. "He's prone to exaggeration. I was there. All they were doing was building a starbase, not planting explosives. You can't destroy a star."

"_So was I, Wolf, and it sure looked like they were trying to destroy it._"

"Whatever. Just pay attention or you won't get paid. I'm not paying for your funeral either."

The feline laughed again. _"You won't have to. I've nobody at home waiting for me._"

"Me neither."

Wolf clicked off the radio. He was not one to waste time talking. Talking got in the way of flying, fighting, and, most importantly, surviving. And he intended to do the latter as often as he was able.

He was also looking forward to billing the Alliance once this was all over. He knew of several things he could do with all of that money since it wouldn't be just Corneria or Zoness paying. Money got you things. A new ship, allies, most importantly a warp drive for his Wolven. Well, maybe not a Wolven, but it would go a long ways toward a mothership. And it would be fully paid off, too, unlike Star Fox. That was one of the many reasons why he never had a mothership, that inability to fully pay it. Even if he sold off Sargasso and every living soul aboard, that still wouldn't be enough for a ship that was completely his. Sometimes the lone sharks were more dangerous than actual ones, be they legal or illegal. Everything had a price.

That offhand comment by Panther, though. He had to restrain a chuckle, lest he had been lazy and something got over the channels. For all he claimed nobody was waiting for him, it was abundantly clear Panther had his eyes set on a certain someone—a certain member of Star Fox. Wolf may be blind in one eye but not even he could miss the attraction between the two. Well, it was currently one-sided on Panther's part. Krystal still seemed to be under Fox's sway.

Wolf didn't know when Panther had taken a liking to her, but it apparently dated to the beginning of the war, when Star Fox was pursuing one of their former, renegade members. That stinkin' Pigma, traitorous bastard. Wolf didn't mind having scum working for him, just as long as they got the job done and he was not hurt by it. But there was something about that pig which grated on his nerves, and it even turned Leon off—anything which made that maniac wary or subdued was someone to watch. When Star Fox came knocking on his door looking for him Wolf was only too happy to oblige, turning a blind eye to Panther letting slip the location. It served everyone nicely—Wolf could sleep easy knowing the pig was dead, and Panther could continue to pine over the girl. Heh, now wouldn't that be funny if she showed feelings in return?

"_Wolfy, oh Wolfy!_"

"Yeah, what?" he growled at the singsong call, annoyed at it breaking his line of thought.

"_I just thought you'd want to know that over around the other side of the big blue planet there's a gigantic surging of energy where none existed. I'm here now, it looks like a big glowy thing on my screens, and Aparoids are coming out of it from out of nothing. Imagine that? Also imagine how much of a bonus we'll get when we tell the Alliance!_"

Wolf sighed. Damn you, Leon. Get to the point next time instead of dancing around the bush.

"All right, thank you, Leon," he said at last. "I'll let the General know. Where is it, exactly?"

"_Oh, it is only about __roughly 17,987,547,480 meters away; or one light-minute._" The mood-swing of his reply was disconcerting. "_It looks like they're bringing through larger ships,_" Leon added.

"Yeah, thanks. Keep an eye on them."

"_Make sure to mention the possibility of a raise!_"

Wolf changed channels.

"Star Wolf to _Queen of Lylat_," he said briskly. "We have detected a rogue jumpgate opposite the Jovian a light-minute out. Ships are coming through and they're here for reinforcement. Over."

There was a muffled explosion over the radio—_well, now, who could that be?_—and instead of the expected controller answering Wolf instead heard the breathy and slightly panicked voice of General Pepper himself. From the sound of things the man was perilously close to an aneurysm. "_A rogue jumpgate you say? How the f*** did we miss that?! Star Wolf, I want you to go and knock that thing out immediately._"

"Affirmative, _Queen_, but we need reinforcements. Over."

"_Oh, yes, I'll send two megawings straightaway._"

"Negative: we need warships." _Good Lord, am I really asking for this? Generals are supposed to be smarter than that_, he reflected. Two megawings were huge, but they're only fighters, not battleships. "We need Dominion ships, over."

"_Sorry, they're tied up in—hey Shears, what's that thingy called?_" Wolf grimaced at the sudden noise. There was a short ringing silence before Pepper's voice came back online. "_Yeah, sorry, they're busy in that… that Fingolfin maneuver thing of theirs. Lots of ships, they're unavailable, trying to get to the planet. You're on your own._"

God-f***ing-damnit-all to hell and back.

"Affirmative, _Queen_," was all he answered. "Star Wolf out." Wolf changed channels again, cursing underneath his breath. "This is Wolf to Wolfen Two, Panther do you read me?"

"_Wolfen Two to Wolf, read you loud and clear._" Panther's voice was staticy, probably because he was in a firefight and numerous energy signatures kept distorting the signal. "_What's the situation?_"

"_Queen'_s sending us two megawings to take on that jumpgate's Leon reported. Get the hell over here and form up on my port. We're going in. Keep any bogeys off your rear-end."

"_Affirmative. Wolven Two out._"

Radio dead, Wolf gave full vent as he changed directions.

Couldn't that damn man see that Star Wolf would be shredded without adequate reinforcement? Yes, of course Wolf was a mercenary and not a regular pilot, but that was no reason to brush him off like that. Either the situation in assaulting the Homeworld was _that_ serious—really, just how many warships did it take to surround a planet?—or else the Aparoids were a harder nut to crack after all. Or else the man could be just that stupid, and that's why he was sending Wolf to die. Probably wouldn't bat an eye until after the battle when it came time to pay up. F***ing idiot!

Wolf was a veteran of four different wars, including the Great War itself, and he knew that leadership of this caliber would not last long, no matter how many times Pepper deluded himself about it. Even Andross was smarter than that and _he _took on an interstellar empire with only a few planets. Not exactly a smart thing to do either. Then again the Foundation wasn't too smart as well, and were probably desperate at that point. Wolf shook his head in remembrance. Poor bastards, their death-warrant was signed and sealed by Death himself. Only cause he had ever a legitimate reason for fighting in beside money—of course, it wouldn't do go to remember that…

"_Commander O'Donnell, sir, this is squad leader Starbuck reporting in for duty._"

The sudden voice made him confused right until he put together two and two and remembered where he was. _Now what was the terminology again? Navy or airforce_—_oh yeah. _Right, he was the Wing Commander for two megawings of doomed fools and this was apparently his second from one of them. Just great.

"Yes, yes," he answered distractedly, keeping an eye on his screen. "I suppose I'm Gold Leader, aren't I?" There was an old joke among war veterans that anything with the name gold in them was doomed, as they were usually destroyed no matter the engagement, because they were bright and shiny: targets with a bullseye painted on them. In fact, even though he was not a superstitious man, Wolf chose it as a solemn joke.

"_Where do you want me, over?_"

Straight to the point. God, he was beginning to like this kid.

"You're assigned to my port, seven-o'-clock of Outer Circle, over."

"_Starbuck, wilco_."

"Gold Leader out."

Switching off, Wolf watched as ships began to fill his screens. Visuals from his central showed the glowing ion-trails of the closest fighter before him, undoubtedly correcting its position. Portside and starboard showed more fighters; the screen above central, three-dimensional radar, had several hundred green blips surrounding him, showing distance and speed together along with variables, with his and one other ship (Panther, of course) in yellow-outlined green. This was to ensure that they could maneuver and defend one another's flanks or backs should one have a drone on their tail. Only his tertiary screens were occupied with such factors as fuel and weapons and shielding. Wolf knew he would have to return to the nearest mothership for refuel and repair, and as quickly as possible, too. Who knew what Panther and Leon would do; he had explicitly ordered them beforehand that they did not need his permission to refuel. But it was likely they'd do so anyway—they weren't total fools, unlike a certain General he could name.

But that little gesture was enough of a reminder that he had their backs, looked out for them. They were like family, almost, in a way that he'd never had since childhood. Not even the pirate gang he had commanded prior to the Lylat Wars was like this; he'd ruled them by force and fear. No, these _anthropoi_ here respected him and loved him. In their own way, not mushy-gushy as weaklings—like Star Fox—would do. That might change, eventually, one day, if that Krystal chick joined out of reciprocated feelings for Panther. Women tend to do things like that.

Wolf aligned his ship to the designated position and altered his speed and trajectory to match with those of his new squadmates. By virtue of his position as Gold Leader he was at the forefront of Gold Wing, surrounded by ships but with the front wide open. That jumpgate would appear any second now if they maintained their current speed. The Jovian was long behind them now. It was good he was in front and not in the midst of the group—even with the impressive distances between fighters (a cozy fifty kilometers) he had a touch of the claustrophobic. Mercenary self-interest wanted him to have a clear space to jet away from danger, duty kept him right where he was. If his odds were right, nothing short of a kinetic solution or a ship deliberately targeting him would destroy his Wolven.

In his experience, the odds were never right. Gotta make do with the cards one was dealt with.

"_Jumpgate in four light-seconds,_" Squad-leader Starbuck reported. "_Aparoid fleet approaching._"

"Attack pattern delta," Wolf advised. "Disperse their strength."

His screens transformed from an orderly procession of fightercraft to a ducking-and-weaving confusion of light. He ignored them all except where they concerned his ship—which required an extraordinary sixth and seventh sense to do—and flying itself. Apart from the inertia whenever he changed position, it was not much different from flying in a simulator. Except that one only had a single shot before death. Simulator, you could restart.

Vibrations came as Aparoid weapons fire filled local space.

Hundreds of flying wings veered off in a claw-like pincer-formation, attempting to close off any escape, while their central counterparts continued speeding forward, using insane amounts of fuel to rocket forward beyond any _anthropinos'_ endurance. Following the rear came the standard Aparoid warship followed by carriers. Behind _them_, more indistinct, were single-shape warships, their function and capabilities unknown.

The forwardmost Alliance fighters launched approximately ten thousand shattermissiles, lesser versions of the shatternuke, at the oncoming greyish black storm before peeling off to allow the rearguard to fire. The first volley sped towards the enemy almost unopposed, a glowing mass of lights—then the darkness of space transformed into a colossal firestorm of light and energy as the missiles deployed their active warheads. Alien fighters unlucky to be caught in the blast-radii were instantly vaporized. Others further away suffered damage to internal mechanisms and organs, a large majority rendered powerless—floating like dead weight in vacuum. The clouds of dust were relentless, however, and the first hundred thousand directly impacted were soon replaced by more; the first hundred thousand _million_ indirectly paralyzed were scooped up by tractor beams into their motherships for repair and recharge. The great warships were hardly affected—the third volley, passing through empty space, was simply brushed aside.

Behind them, a mere two light-seconds away, the jumpgate "glowed" around the edges of its great portaled circle—a circle that was, for all of its incredible size, no bigger than a thimble on the viewscreens. Even magnification showed an object the size of a baseball. No fancy or impressive orb of light was to be seen in the filling of the circle save the superstructure around, like in science-fiction flicks—only an orb of darkness, like that of space around them, was all that could be seen: no stars were to be seen through its portal.

That gate was the Alliance's target. If it was destroyed, a mass genocide would be avoided, as the Alliance could not spare the manpower nor the resources to effectively counter any reinforcements of significant strength. Other jumpgates existed in this system, but they were both too far away and the complexities of gravity's influence in the dense, star-filled region of the Core surrounding this system made Jumping a near impossibility on a normal day. Each second the Alliance delayed in getting to the gate meant millions more aliens pouring from the transwarp portal to do battle. Each second delayed meant that Wolf had to wait longer for it to end so he could get paid. If he survived.

_Time to make every bullet count. _Even if this operation was doomed to fail, as he knew it would without adequate reinforcement, Wolf knew his duty extended beyond pay. Every soldier was a brother in arms, and the General's speech be damned about dying. _Let's do this._

He depressed the triggers and let hell reign.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

A/N: _Reviews are fully welcome._


	3. Begin the Fight—III

A/N: _As FFN is having a little issue with its reviews, if I do not reply to you as quickly as I normally do, this is because I can't see your reviews (yet), even though showing up in the list and/or my email. But rest assured I'll answer as soon as it is possible._

_Have a great Fourth of July Weekend, and stay safe!_

_NOTE: Beta-read by _Writer of Worlds_._

~X~X~X~X~X~X

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

**_Begin the Fight_**

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_**Palpatine's Teachings**_—**John Williams**—(YouTube, iTunes, AmazonMP3, Google Play, Spotify)

* * *

_**In space, no one can hear you scream…**_

* * *

In the silence of the Throne Room, broken by occasional torpedo strikes, there chimed a small, but persistent bell upon the table-mounted viewscreen. Its female recipient ignored it, engrossed in something far more engaging than the expected report.

"_…O, name him not: let us not break with him;/For he will never follow any thing/That other men begin. / Then leave him out. / Indeed he is not fit…_"

Dim lighting provided little illumination, having been powered down to conserve valuable energy for the duration of the battle, leaving blue-black shadows to cover the chamber. Hexagonally patterned walls were hinted at but they were indeterminate; the high vaulted ceiling, braced with Corinthian pillars, disappeared into the gloom. The floor was similar, glowing a light cyan wherever the light shone upon it. Vast tapestries of dark purplish colors rippled ever-so-slightly in the still air, their designs and patterns indistinct to the casual eye. Every so often they would shake vigorously as another missile strike thudded against the shields, then return as they were before.

Over against one wall, curving and circular to fit, were vague outlines of numerous shelves full of dark materials, some blocky, others twisted in alien shapes. Over at another gleamed an opalescent crystal door, its subtle colors mingling in the ambient, diffused light. Strange geometrical figures and forms lay scattered across the rest of the chamber (though they couldn't be called furniture) with no apparent use or design to them.

The room was seemingly frozen in time, a portal into the past. But also a portrait of the present, and a vision of the future. Of the Collective's vision of reality.

In the center of the chamber, sitting side-by-side in a large hollow, were the major sources of the soft light. Two octagonal tables, each indented with a holographic display surrounded by numerous control panels of alien function and purpose. From one of these panels flashed a light, one that was ignored.

Both viewscreens showed the same thing: the immense green-grey sphere of the Aparoid Homeworld, partly whole, partly biomechanical. Seven smaller orbs rotated around it, each one with its own clique of satellites. And further out, approximately five lightminutes away, were eight even smaller spheres; but unlike their natural counterparts, whose orbits varied from elliptical to polar to circular and others, these were geosynchronized to the Homeworld's equator (also known as geostationary) and moved in the same orbit around with no gravity perturbations.

There was, however, one major difference. The holotable on the right showed the Homeworld as it appeared from solar orbit to orbit daily: its moons turned at about six or seven rotations per minute, the detail rendered so minutely one could see the phases changing from waxing to waning, from full to new, and their own complementary bodies were likewise rendered. Light from her invisible sun showed the changing of night and day upon the planet itself, shadows from the many moons interrupting the pattern as their orbits saw fit. In the darkness of myriad eclipses and the night glittered patchwork swaths of light, indicating a lively civilization.

The one on the left showed the battle. In real time.

Most of it was centered around the eight geosynchronized balls. Tiny, intricately detailed warships no more than a millimeter long battled one another in complex, rigmarole dances. Vast "banks" of explosions filled the local space like a swarm of never-ending firecrackers. Smaller lights, arranged so in patterns that resembled a chaotic, writhing sheet of fine muslin that endlessly folded in and out upon itself filled what was left of open space. The rest of the battle was clustered around the distant stargate, eight lightminutes away from the Homeworld and her moons. In the emptiness between the planet and her furthest satellites flared intermittent skirmishes between the most Brobdingnagian of ships of either side: Ardan battlecruisers and assimilated Collective versions. From this vantage point the designs of the battlefleets were impressive, showing that a spatial battle was as much a ballroom dance as it was a fight to the death.

But, even with this technological wonder here, the immense size of space—the varying difference of attacking and defending forces in size—and the compression of it all to a sight where the naked eye could take everything in, scarcely a tenth of the actual battle could be seen. If it were possible to see everything—each and every exchange of weapons fire between fighters, each and every payload delivered between warships, each and every explosion upon station shieldings—there would be no room for the Homeworld or her moons—it would have to be expanded to the other projector. Or to the any of the other projectors dotted 'round about the Throne Room, and it would be too small to see the ships except as lights moreover.

What was shown here was both a feat of computer engineering and a work of art together nonetheless. It was enough.

But to the woman sitting upon her darkened chair this sight was of no concern. She disliked the boring details of battle, of reading how many combat-drones or battlecraft were lost in conflict, of seeing how many warships were destroyed: it was so uncivilized, brooding over battle and war. It did not even matter that the attack had come at the most inopportune of times, where, due to the Homeworld's alignment with the other planets in the system, it was impossible to Warp in an overwhelming horde of reinforcements to sweep away the invaders like a flood; only a single gate could be active, and never mind the others (which were probably destroyed).

No, such things were to be left alone to underlings. They had their Standing Orders, and all she wanted was to be left in peace to her book. Even her attendants she had dismissed from their duties.

Even the ruler of the Collective needed some time to herself.

"…_Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him:/If he love Caesar, all that he can do/Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar:/And that were much he should; for he is given/To sports, to wildness and much company."_ her soft voice chanted, breaking the stillness of the room and elevating somewhat the sounds of distant battle. _"There is no fear in him; let him not die;/For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter—_"

*BEEEEEEEEeeeeep*

Her eyes blinked, broken from their vision of another world, and back to printed letters upon a yellowed page. A sigh escaped her lips. _What is it this time…? _She turned to where the light blinked incessantly upon her throne's arm. Considering it. There was only one who would dare to impinge upon her privacy in such a manner, and with such impudence as well.

"_Peace! count the clock_," she said. "It hath stricken three."

Oh so very well. Let us see who wishes to speak with Her Majesty.

Marking her place, she brushed a finger over the blinking contact—it immediately died out to spawn a holographic image of the contactee in its place. Her lips curled in distaste. _Oh. So it is it, then,_ she thought. This particular drone was a new addition to the Collective, relatively speaking. In relation to the battle, extremely new. And oh so annoying. Her eyes went between her book and the hologram. _Why not just let it hang again? It has its Orders, surely there is no need for such a thing here_…

Then, unbidden, there came into her mind a deeper voice from memory, one with authority that was borne of aristocracy. It had instructed her very specifically on how to deal with this drone, and one of those instructions was to make it _happy_. What a foreign term, for combat drones. Ordinary workers, it was to be expected; for the higher-ups, it was an integrated portion of their psyche. But… to bend custom and law of the Collective in favor of an individual which had yet to earn its place among the Hierarchy of hierarchies…

It was unthinkable.

The Power that Is thought otherwise. And It was not one to be crossed.

"_'Tis time to part,_" she said, more in thought than any reluctance. Time she had aplenty—the sooner she "checked" on its needs and wants, the quicker she could return to peaceful contemplation. Setting the book down in its tray, over which a protective shielding shimmered into being, she stood and walked down to the holographic tables within their bowl. She could always play her little game with it, by making it wait just a teeny bit longer; an amusement that tickled her to no end.

In form and figure she was an _anthropos, _though of a species and a race which were long dead. Physically, she was close enough to Lylatian _anthropoi_ to pass for one at a distance. But there did the resemblance end. No tail of any kind, no full coat of fur, scales or feathers whatsoever: she was naked, the color of new bone, and dressed in a single-piece garment of the same shading. Her face was "flat" as compared to a vulpes or a lupine, but distinctly set apart from the apes. Startlingly green eyes looked out of recessed, darkened sockets; ridged ears sat upon either side of her head (as opposed to atop it); and a long mane of dark, braided hair trailed down behind—most definitely not an ape.

It could be called beautiful, in another time and place—yea, indeed, the Power that Is had complimented her once or twice—but there was no warmth in her features but a body of ice, no light but two glittering emeralds. There hovered about her a chilliness that set her apart from others of her sex, from even her own species, if they still lived.

Beauty was secondary, even tertiary, because it had no purpose… unless it furthered the cause. The cause was everything now. This was made clear when this "war" was embarked upon.

Reaching the table-mounted viewscreens she halted and leaned over one, her body breaking into the simulation. The miniature ships and planetary bodies skittered out of her way, further reducing what could be seen, and a blank screen reappeared. Within her mind hummed the activity of an infinite number of sapient beings, ranging all the way from the immediate conflict here to the furthest borders of the empire, those few systems closest to the Aalaag—an entity beyond the powers of the so-called Alliance now arranged against her, come to think of it. She had closed them all out, leaving a background ambiance behind, preferring silence to the noise of battle—but the call now awaiting her seem to bring it back.

"Voice diction, only," her voice rang out.

Glowing, multicolored shapes and symbols took three-dimensional, solid form on the holographic terminal; immensely minute cubes and dodecahedrons aligned with even smaller diamonds and pyramids, creating the I.D. of her contact as if it were upon an upright two dimensional screen. Finally the chaotic mess receded, leaving behind order where there had been none:

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

**To:** HerroyalmajestytheQueen/TFB/&amp;/Core-200:5FEB"teen"4—network/Palace

**From:** Halanross9001/AreaS6x/&amp;/VenIgence-199:7JUN"irty"3—network/BattleCommand

**Subject:** _Regroup!_

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_This? Come on, really?_

"You may speak, 9001" she ordered.

"_Mistress,_" the voice began, "_I request that we pull back war- and fighter-craft from Installations 999-05633Bvv0, 243-90011Nll0, 002-34500Zvv0, and 233-41287Vvv7 and send them elsewhere. Those are nearly lost and it is pointless to keep useful units guarding such a waste of—_"

"I told you I do not care what happens out there. Do as you see fit."

"_—The stargate is in need of reinforcements and__—_"

"I do not care."

"_—But extreme losses, Mistress! We're losing combat units as fast as we can turn them out__—_"

"I do not care. You have your Standing Orders, and I expect you to be creative with them."

"_But—But the Tactical Computer wants confirmation—!_"

"Tell them that from henceforth anything that they would have done on their own—anything that seems to be an emergency—without having to wait for my command is permitted." Already, she had enough of this. "Do you understand, 9001?"

Silence.

Then, at last after a long uncomfortable while (on its side), it answered, reluctantly: "_Yes, Your Majesty._"

Much better. It understood. She could sympathize with it, though, remembering a time where she had been in its position. Her superiors were more patient with her, yes, but that was under different circumstances. Never in a battle, and never once in her life did she dare impinge upon their time or attention. Alone, 9001 was useless and a waste of space. In its former life it had been a rather incompetent rebel leader, making mistakes where a lieutenant wouldn't have dared, botching operations a sleeping captain could have avoided easily enough, _bungling_ its strategies like a green _cadet!_ But, notwithstanding these past errors, under the Collective's guidance and tutelage its skills had grown and matured greatly, reducing the likelihood of erring by an hundred-thousand fold; yet, still, it lacked that most common and elemental of things in all creatures—respect for one's superior.

But…

Perhaps she was too short with it. Maybe that was the problem—she just wasn't letting it use its full potential. It was still a child. That would explain why it came continually to her, asking for permission to do the simplest of things. Perhaps that also explained why the Power that Is wanted her to keep it happy. But for what reason? What was the point? If it was indeed a child—as she saw it—then why bother placing it in a position of command where any mistake could cost the Collective grievously?

Again, the Power that Is had control. It came back to that one elemental fact—It was in command. Even if she were cut off from the rest of the Collective's empire, from the Council of Twelve themselves, there was a reason for all of this. For everything.

Everything… yes…

"Shouldn't you be going?" she asked when the blinking light did not fade. Let her get back to her book; there were more important things to do than listening to dull things like battle and conflict. As it happened, this book was a particular favorite of hers, an older copy from an era long gone into the misty recesses of time…

"_Ah… yes, there is that, um, yes…_" "9001" coughed, static garbling the transmission. "_Shouldn't Your Majesty be… elsewhere more safe?_"

"I do as I will, 9001," she answered imperiously. "What is that to you?"

"_Um, yes… I am concerned—_"

"Again, 9001, I am not to be bothered with such things as my safety. I do as I will," she repeated. "_Your _job, however, is to maintain the blockade. Keep those fools from vanishing. I am not concerned about them attacking my person. Why should you?"

"_But, Altruis, you're the Queen—!_"

"And you are a machine," she snapped, her temper getting the better of her. Child or no, _no one _called her by that name, ever. Not even the Power that Is! "Now get ye hence out of my hearing before I relieve you of command and place _you_ in a fightercraft for disrespecting my name in that fashion—do you understand me?"

"_9001 out, my lady,_" the cybernetic voice answered promptly, wisely, and its voice faded away: blinking light too.

Finally. That was over and done with.

She breathed easily, tension gone. No one called her by that name… no one but the Council of Twelve. There were some boundaries that even 9001 couldn't cross. But it was no matter, she thought. It was just a peasant anyway, a mere knave. One had to be patient with them, otherwise, they'd get nothing done. Maybe when this battle was over it would be best to reprogram it and ship it off to the Kessel Sector instead of a mere dismantling—she would shed no tear should the Aalaag strike that area again; losses were common there after all. But there was the Council of Twelve. She'd have to speak to them first.

Maybe not. 9001 had some use. Perhaps, given time, it could mature to become a War Mind all on its own, and be trusted enough with its own fleet. That was always a possibility. And there was a useful corollary thereof, for her anyway; her prestige and station would rise again, from lowly Empress to perhaps even a Star Empress, for such a contribution to the Collective. No, that was too much to hope for.

She chuckled.

_Best not to think of the future, not when current circumstances require thine attentions,_ she thought contentedly. As long as the Lylatians and their pathetic Alliance did not catch on to what was actually happening, she could rest easy. It was good to be the intermediate power, and not the highest within the high Hierarchy of hierarchies; being able to take direction and use it in the most creative fashion possible without worrying overmuch about consequences suited her. Suited her very well indeed.

Turning she left the viewscreens behind, letting the simulation reassemble itself once more, and went back to her throne, a darker, triangular shadow against the everpresent gloom. Taking her seat again she reached down and picked up her book, a small thing with a faded title in alien letters upon the cover, and turned back to where she left off.

Aha, there it is.

"_But it is doubtful yet,/Whether Caesar will come forth to-day, or no;_" she began again, "_For he is superstitious grown of late,/Quite from the main opinion he held once/Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies:/It may be, these apparent prodigies,/The unaccustom'd terror of this night,/And the persuasion of his augurers,/May hold him from the Capitol to-day_…"

It was good to be Queen.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

There was something Fox always remembered when flying in space, and that was Newton's Laws of Motion. The First Law: _Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it._ The Second Law: _Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. For a constant mass, force equals mass times acceleration (F=m a)._ The Third Law: _For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction._

All three of which were true in space, especially when there was no "opposite" reaction to slow down one's space-fighter unless one fired retros or ran into a tractor beam—and this not counting the subtle influence of gravity, which was present everywhere from the local gravity of a planet's rotational spin to the depths of interstellar space. (Einstein at it again.) The First Law he had the most experience with, for every time he fired the engines or was hit with a glancing blow he felt it in his bones. The Gravity-Diffusion systems of his craft, however outdated they may be, kept him from becoming squashed to jelly, but not even they could completely cancel out the law of inertia.

And when being launched out into space from a cruiser (after a refueling or repair), his G-Diffusers were virtually useless, such were the pressures forced upon him. Some had described it as going over the edge of a very long roller-coaster drop; others had compared it with sky-diving. For him, it was atmospheric reentry. Every time his Awing—which was a space-plane by any other name—descended down to Corneria, having its underside and nose be cooked by superheated air, he felt every shock and jolt exerted upon his ship. It was a wonder it had held together after all of these years of service.

At least in space there was no atmosphere to blunt his speed; not even the magnetic shielding which kept air, heat and pressure inside the Star Cruiser halted him.

So it was, as he waited in his launch tube, staring down the long, dark tunnel lined by its triangulating lights ending in a void of darkness, he felt, not for the first time, a twinge of unease at the expectation of it. At least reentry gave warning when his shields started turning red and orange and the Arwing began shaking. Here, it was silence. Dead silence, broken only by internal thuds as other craft were launched.

"Lieutenant McCloud," broke in Ghostie, his recently equipped A.I. from after the Battle of Corneria's Warp Gate, "We're about to be fired in approximately six seconds. All systems are green and ready to go. Prepare for fueling detachment."

"Thanks, Ghostie," Fox began—just then, several dull _clunks_ accompanied by brief hissing vibrated through the Arwing fuselage; the fueling pipes had retracted while the launcher's claws had taken hold simultaneously. "Couldn't you warn me a little earlier?"

"Next time I shall—hold on." Ghostie's light faded from his computer as the space-plane suddenly rocketed forward. Fox closed his eyes briefly as his body pressed against his seat, knowing that it'd would be over soon. It was a natural part of the spacer's life, these kinds of moments. If only Newton had formulated a different set of laws…

"_Fox, we're all right behind ya!_" came Falco's voice crackling into his speakers a moment later. Fox opened his eyes as weightlessness took hold momentarily, then gravity was returned to normal as G-Diffusion kicked in. It was only a simulation of normal gravity though, about one third of such, but it was better than nothing.

"Excellent, Falco," he answered. "Every one else, report in."

"_Falco here!_" the exuberant avian answered, glee in his voice.

"_Krystal here._"

"_Miyu here._"

"_Fay here._"

"_Katt here._"

"_Dash here._"

Fox looked out his portside to where Fay, Katt and Dash's varied ships hovered beside in a diagonal line going back. On his other side the same was true for Miyu, Krystal, and Falco. He reflected for a moment the irony of this formation: he, a man, was in the center, surrounded by two females each with a male finishing off the formation. It was quite unusual, a gender sandwich of sorts. But then that was Star Fox for you.

Falco and Dash were excellent fighter pilots, the former exceeding the latter by years alone in the field; both had proven to be aces, and sought to see which could shoot down the most ships before the other could in earlier flights. It was a harmless little game, something to break the fact that at any moment both could die suddenly and quickly. The four girls, Krystal, Katt, Miyu and Fay, were good pilots enough on their own. Krystal was by far the youngest in her flying skills, her planet lacking aircraft to practice them; he suspected it was on Sauria that she learned her true calling. Katt was… well, she was a maverick in the same way Falco was, challenging the bird's ego in more ways than one. Miyu and Fay stuck close together, both former interceptor pilots from Zoness's now decimated military, and could be counted upon to watch one's back.

But the fact was that, no matter for all of their varied skills or inexperience, all of them had proven well in working together in so short a time as this. If only Slippy and Peppy could be here. Well, maybe not the toad. Peppy was the captain of the _Fox_. Fara hated flying for all that she was a test pilot for the Cornerian Army; she preferred to stay with the bigger cruisers. It was a shame she couldn't be here. But, again, they all had their own skills to give to the team, and some of them were simply not fighter material.

As for himself—he was the son of James McCloud Sr., one of the best fighter pilots in all of the Lylat… before his death.

Twice alone.

"_Lieutenant McCloud,_" another, deeper voice rumbled in the cockpit, breaking his thoughts. Fox turned his attention back to the computer screen. There hovered the holographic head of Saru Bowman, communications officer aboard the _Queen of Lylat_; and incidentally Andross' half-brother. "_Your orders are to rendezvous with battlewings Bulldog, Husky, Terrier, Sheepdog and Wolfhound, and strike the Aparoid Dyson Sphere directly before you. We suspect, from the energy emissions, that these structures are oversized shield-generators. Destroy them, we weaken the shield, and it may come down. The Ardan and Klingon forces are converging upon its opposite side as I speak._"

"Understood, sir," he answered, nodding. The holographic head faded away to be replaced with a silvery sphere the size of a baseball. Their target. Seven other spheres had been located already and were being attacked right now. Destroy one, the shield was weakened; destroy all, and the shield will fall. Then the ground assault—or bombardment, whichever came first—could begin in earnest.

Then this battle could be finished.

"_So, Fox, what's our goal?_" Falco asked again. Dash echoed similar sentiments, quieter than the bird.

"Target's dead ahead." Fox pointed for emphasis, despite that he couldn't see the thing yet. "Aparoid Dyson Sphere. We're to join with five battlewings and swarm it."

"_Are you kidding me?_" That came from Miyu. "_That thing's huge! Over six hundred kilometers in diameter! What could fighters do against it?_"

"_Miyu, dear_"—that would be Krystal, her aristocratic voice sounding calm as ever—"_We'll be covered from behind by the _Great Fox_ and the Cornerian fleet. They'll be taking the brunt of its firepower. We are to knock out its defenses and let the cruisers do their job._"

"_I didn't ask for your answer, princess,_" Miyu snarled back.

"Hey now, girls," Fox said, "please keep focused."

"_Easy for you to say,_" came the mumbled rejoinder, but Miyu did as she was told. Fay, however, pipped in with a question: "_What are we to do exactly?_"

"Simple: we go in, bomb the hell out of its guns, both big and small, and then get out before the glassing begins, just as Krystal said."

"_That—That doesn't sound reassuring…_"

"_C'mon, Fay, don't be such a wimp,_" Katt said. "_Imagine all of the fun we'll have! I'll keep score—wait, no, Traveler here will keep score, and the one who gets last kill buys something for us all._"

"_Hey, I'm already getting Miyu a drink, you cat!_" Fay replied.

"_Doesn't matter to me—I'll be getting kills while you're debating over who foots the bill._"

"_Yeah, that will be me footing your beak, you overgrown pheasant!_"

"Heads up, team, we're converging on them!" Fox called, breaking through the chatter. "We can talk later—'oly, what the hell?!"

Seven sleek shapes, each with twin engines jutting out upon long wings, soared over above them, moving at over three times the speed of the Arwings. The glowing blue flares of their drives appeared moments later. After them came several Asari and Turian warships, followed closely by Klingon Vor'chas flanked by raptors and warbirds in groups of three. Their profiles were only barely distinguishable from the surrounding darkness—but the heat scanners in Fox's ship told a different story, glowing red and orange as they passed over and underneath them.

"_Hey, buddy-boy, we need to put more oomph into our ships if we're to outrace those fancy-pants!_"

"Right-o, Falco. Lock S-foils in attack-position."

"_Hey, that rhymed!_"

Fox grinned as their seven-fighter squadron picked up the pace, their own drives pulsing with power, and angled off their launch vector down to where a large group of fighters congregated in a massive attack formation. They hovered into their assigned positions by the formation leader and locked in. Up ahead the Aparoid Dyson Sphere grew in size; little flares and brief bursts of light flickered about its smooth surface.

Technically, it did not fit the qualifications of a Dyson Sphere. It was more akin to an oversized space station or weapons satellite. But preliminary scans had detected such a large output of energy from it that Alliance intelligence concluded there must be a star of sorts inside. The only thing which confused the scanners was that no gravity fields could be detected—'twas impossible, for a thing that size would produce a large gravitic distortion by its mass alone. But everything about the Collective indicated that they were a massive, technologically advanced civilization, and were perfectly capable of manufacturing such things as artificial stars of disproportional size without any visible sign that they existed. How they did so was a question best left afterward.

All that mattered right now was that it guarded the Homeworld's surface, and the sooner it could be destroyed the better it would be for everyone.

"_All right, everyone, this is_ _it,_" the formation leader transmitted._ "No time for fancy speeches. You got all that enroute here: now's the time for action! Time to show these creatures what we're really made of! All fighters, attack!_"

Fox gunned his engines again, and shot forward, followed by the rest of Star Fox.

"_Enemy contacts inbound!_"

Small sections of the alien surface seem to dissolve into mist to be replaced with a black cloud of fighters, drones and bombers. Cuttlefish warships and starfish carriers followed out behind them, detaching from towers arching up from the surface; already glowing pulsations of red light were forming at the tips of their weapon-arms. Hundreds more battleship varieties came after them.

_This is where the fun begins,_ Fox thought.

A hailstorm of missiles, torpedoes and multicolored lasers erupted from the attacking Alliance fighters, longer phaser streaks and powerful shatternukes following close behind from the warships. The enemy responded in like kind; soon, explosions from colliding missiles and glancing shield blows were common. A great burst of light flared up on everyone's starboard side—a Vor'cha had succumbed to concentrated lasers from the cuttlefish ships. Another burst, this time an enemy carrier splitting in two as six different phasers carved through its needle-like spines to the core.

Fox maneuvered his Arwing behind a group of Allied fighter-craft, twin-engine bombers, and followed after. Each Aparoid drone that hove into his targeting sights was instantly destroyed. The bomber-craft continued their run, the single turret mounted behind each cockpit defending as best as it could with Fox's help, and they came over their target—the unsuspecting rear of a particularly massive starfish carrier.

The four warbirds dueling it were swooping in and around it, firing surgical phaser strikes at wherever the shields had weakened enough; then, as the bomber-craft approached, they turned and rocketed out. In their place, the bombers launched missile payload after payload into the ship's already damaged body. Just as the last missile volley exploded upon its shields, a single yellow laser beam lanced it from the distant Cornerian warships, and it went nova.

Fox turned off his vector, shutting his eyes to the blast, and moved toward another section of the fighting.

"Lieutenant," Ghostie said promptly. "A squadron of enemy bombers are moving toward the CDFS _Enterprise_; move quickly and you can surprise them."

"I'm on it, thank you."

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_An indeterminate amount of time later_…

"_Fox! Fox, are you with us, buddy?_"

"No—I mean yes," he stammered, his eyes half-shut as an Asari dreadnought went nova off his starboard side, filters darkening to prevent burning his eyes out. "What is it, Falco?"

He recovered as the blast faded to bearable levels, and quickly pulled his ship into a port-side dive away from the expanding cloud of debris. The energy readings monitoring his engines started to near critical, but a moment later subsided as Ghostie opened the stability foils. Heat began to decrease rapidly, venting straight into space, and after a moment, the foils closed and power was restored to normal.

"_For a moment I thought you'd been knocked out of the channel,_" Falco said, his normally cocky voice a little uneasy. "_You're awfully close to that explosion._"

"Nah, I'm fine. There's not a missile out there that can touch m—" A frantic beeping on his screen forced Fox to perform an aileron roll. He punched a button, and a moment later the beeping ceased. His decoy had destroyed the missile.

"_Just keep close to me, all right?_"

"Right, Falco." _And why do you have to be so worried for me, all of a sudden?_ he wondered annoyedly. _Do your job! _He locked onto four vultures—alien fighters of little intelligence yet wickedly adaptable—and blasted away. Two peeled off from his lasers, one damaged in the wing. The other two also peeled off—right into one other.

The battle had not gone so well for the Allies. They had swarmed the Dyson Sphere all right—and it had swarmed them back. For each thousand enemy battleships destroyed, out streamed an hundred-thousand more to replace them. Alliance warships were forced to keep a safe distance of two lightseconds back to avoid taking extreme losses from thing's heavy cannons. Fighter-units had gone down to the surface to deal as much damage as they could, but they weren't doing a whole lot of good. At the rate they were going it would be a week before they rendered the battle-station inoperable.

Fay, Miyu, Katt and Dash had long since departed from the battle above, following battlewings Husky and Wolfhound to strafe the enemy guns and destroy as much of the ship-disgorging entrances as possible; Alliance intelligence beamed the co-ordinates as fast they appeared to them. Meanwhile Fox, Falco and Krystal stayed in orbit, drawing away enemy fire and craft as much as possible.

And for some, inexplicable reason his wingmates had decided he couldn't be left alone. He was an _ace _for cryin' out loud! He could take care of himself—and he had Ghostie, too.

"_Fox,_ _wake up!_" cut in Falco's voice, static from all the ECM jamming garbling his transmission. "_Seven contacts inbound! abort, abort!_"

_Wait, what? _What contacts? "I don't see anything," he said, doing a visual. There was nothing in his sights except the usual chaotic mess, and he was handling himself fine as it was. His finger pressed the trigger and another pair of flying wings disintegrated, followed by a vulture; another tap of the finger, this time on another button, and his underjets sent his ship soaring over their remains. "What gives?"

He shifted his gaze over, noted an opening, and dived. Immediately he was swarmed on all sides by flying wings, and he started twisting and turning to avoid hitting one of them. At this speed even the slightest impact would be deadly. No fighter shield had yet been developed that would stop a near-lightspeed, suicidal spacecraft from totally destroying whatever it, and the ship itself, hit. A few bombs here and there solved Fox's problem nicely. No smart bombs, though; too dangerous in these tight quarters.

"_Get back here, James Fox McCloud, right now!_"

"Krystal! what in the name of all that's holy do you want?" he retorted. "What's wrong?"

"_Pull up, repeat, pull up, now! No time to explain, do it!_" she screeched.

Fox looked to his scanners again: still nothing new. Ghostie too hadn't come up with anything. "What do you see?" he asked. "What is it?!"

"_They're tri-fighters_—_missiles, break off, now!_"

"This will be interesting," Ghostie remarked dully. "I've raised all available power to bow shieldings, to be shifted as needed; preparing to engage RC thrusters."

"Wait, wait, wait, where are these "tri-fighters" you are going on about? I don't see anythin—" A beep. Six more beeps. Upon the computer seven red dots were speeding straight for his ship. "Oh… right… I see them now." _Why does it have to be me? Why? _The worst, possible time to be clueless. "Right—everyone, split up, deploy chaff pellets, fire decoys, draw those missiles from your tails—"

The tri-fighters, so nicknamed for the three "arms" which served as a containment bracing for the central, spherical head of the actual machine, released a dozen of the guided projectiles before peeling off into other vectors. The missiles showed up as red dots upon Fox's computer long before the things themselves appeared to visible sight. When they did, it was in seven, glowing blue trails that rapidly disintegrated into numerous others.

"—And—and… oh hell…"

Fox's voice trailed off when he realized he was the only one still here. Everyone had already done so beforehand while he was still talking, speeding away with a pair or three tracking behind. Reacting on instinct he pulled hard on his 'stick, shifted the Arwing around, internal gyros flipping the thing backwards, and hit the thrusters. Full power.

"Didn't you say "_talk later_" earlier, Fox?" Ghostie remarked nonchalantly, eye blinking on the screen. Fox didn't answer. After a few moments the A.I. cut the engines, and the vulpes began to try and outmaneuver his way from certain death. An RC nudge here, another nudge there, all sent him twisting and turning about.

"Yes, yes, I believe I did, thank you ver—oh, why aren't they leaving me?"

"My guess is that—"

"—Trackers, yes, why did it have to be trackers?"

"Always with the rhetorical questions, aren't you? By the way, allow me to ask you this: Would you prefer a close-range volley, a shatternuke, or a kamikaze instead?"

"I hate it when you're literal."

"It's what keeps us alive."

A close-range volley would have obliterated them; shatternuke too. And kamikazes were simply fighter-sized missiles firing lasers and bombs as they went. All three of which were easy to avoid. The first one could be destroyed before most reached his ship, and then he'd GTF out of there before the few that remained came close. The second were solely used against warships, though it was not uncommon to see a battlewing get wiped out by one's sphere of destruction.

Never mind the third.

"You and all the rest," Fox said. "Keeping me alive. Why, here was I thinking you actually allowed me to do my own thing instead of shepherding me around like a kit. Did Peppy program you or something?"

"Certainly not. You are an intelligent organic and perfectly capable of fending for yourself; however, this is not the case, and this is not one of your mercenary missions moreover." Its eye expanded to fill the screen momentarily, giving him the uncanny impression that it was X-raying him. "Must I repeat myself once more?"

"Thank you for reminding me, you useless piece of junk, about something I already knew."

"Useful junk that is keeping you—"

"Oh, shut it and keep me alive, dammit!"

All around him—ignoring for the moment the twenty or so locked-on missiles pursuing—the black void resembled something out of a celebration night, with stars, fireworks and nightbugs. It brought Fox to mind a time when he was very young, when his mom and dad were still alive, when just a night like this used to fill him with wonder and excitement. The stars would be winking down at them from where they stood, outside of their little home, preparing to launch the fireworks into the sky to join the countless others going off; and he more often than naught would be running around chasing the glowing bugs, dad right behind him.

Then a firework exploded before him, many kilometers ahead, and reality slammed in; and he blew a portside RC thruster to get out of the flare's way. Those stars, distant and cold, were suddenly warships, the fireworks the exchange of weaponsfire, the nightbugs countless fighters swooping about. And looming before him was the Aparoid Dyson Sphere. It put the surrounding chaos into perspective.

And it also highlighted a certain cloud of rapidly expanding superheated gasses and molten metal that hadn't had the time to freeze yet.

One he remembered.

_Oh, you've got to be kidding me,_ he thought. _Didn't I just leave this party? _"Ghostie, where the hell are you taking me?" he demanded, beginning to wrench at the 'stick. His Arwing didn't budge.

"Do you want the literal explanation or one more tailored to fit your _anthropinos' _perception?"

"I don't have tim—answer me, _please!_"

"Aft scans indicate approximately twenty-seven heat-seeking missiles locked onto your fighter, and closing in fast. All attempts to dissuade them have proven to be failures: too much interference, both ECM and conflicting heat-signatures of varying strengths. You are the strongest source of heat within a three-dimensional sphere for almost two hundred kilometers around. As such I have concluded there are two ways to get rid of them, the first, and most obvious is to use the Asari Dreadnought's remains."

_You've gotta be kidding me…_

"What's the other option?" Fox growled. "I don't want to get cooked, you malfunctioning idiot!"

Ghostie's diamond-shaped eye swelled from its little corner in the top-right of his Arwing screen to fill it entirely, more than it had ever done before: "The other option is to fly straight into a firing solution. The nearest one is three hundred kilometers off of your starboard bow and some four hundred more below, a Klingon battlecrusier and four warbirds getting hammered by a Collective "cuttlefish" and three carriers."

"At this speed? You've gotta—"

"Do you have an alternative solution, then?" the A.I. queered.

"Can't I just turn this thing around and shoot them instead?" Fox asked.

"Negative. By the time you reorient your craft I expect to be seeing you in whatever afterlife you believe in."

_Why did I have to get stuck with the only A.I. that doesn't have a sense of adventure?_ Fox asked whatever benighted, disinterested space-deity was watching this battle, this particular scene too, right now. If at all. _Why?! _Instead of getting an answer his attention was instead alerted when his screen went all red, Ghostie's eye having retreated, and alarms blaring. "Oh my—!"

His scream, contained within the Arwing's cockpit, was not heard by anyone as he zoomed into the artificial nova. Intense heat blasted away at both shieldings and ablative armors, shredding all communication signals and obliterating every onboard sensor. The trackers followed behind, to detonate as their own guidance systems malfunctioned and/or their bodies melted to speeding lumps of slag.

"—_You motherfracking, malfunctioning nerfherder, you—!_"

At last after speeding through what was the hottest nuclei in the nova, the Arwing emerged out on the other side looking none the worse for it. Well, aside from the paintwork getting burned off, exposing its dull metal alloys to the harshness of space, and the shield generators (minute as they were) protesting vigorously, almost to the point of collapse, he was fine. And the wings, used both for atmospheric entry and heat-radiation, were looking not as efficient as they used to be…

"_Fox, what the hell are you doing?_" Falco's voice burst in when his radio kicked in. "_Are you mad?_"

"If you can shoot my A.I., right now, I will seriously kiss you for it, Falco," Fox growled, finally snapping underneath the pressure. _I thought you were oh-so-protective of me that you'd be right on my tail, shooting those missiles,_ he added mentally. Stupid bird.

"_Awww, Fox, does that mean I can ba—?_"

"That was a _joke_, Krystal!" he yelled back. "Let me get this thing home—oh _shit! I swear to every god and goddess and whatever the hell is out there, Ghostie, I'll dismantle you myself when this is over!_"

His Arwing shuddered as crimson flame bit into its weakened armor, blasting away control surfaces and sending fluid to rapidly crystallize on his window, further damaging his already battered ship. His computer confirmed who his assailants were: nearly half a battlewing's worth of alien fighters had locked onto him. Flying wings, vultures, ordinary Aparoid bug-fighters and numerous drones. In other words, a lot of baddies. And that he had seriously, totally and completely, fucked up.

_And he'd only been out here for a few goddamned minutes!_

"Wasn't my fault this time," came its laconic reply.

Growling audibly, Fox pulled and tugged at his controls, pressing buttons and flipping switches. Decoys and chaff went everywhere, while crazy outmaneuvers squeezed him tightly into his seat, inertia flooring at his body. Not even G-Diffusion could ease off the pressure. And still the alien blasts came closer and closer; first they overshot him, next they began licking at the outermost edges of his shields. Now they were directly slamming against his ship, against the weakening hull-shields—the only thing between him and certain death.

His computer featured the positions of his pursuers behind; every so often one or three would wink out of sight, disintegrated by one of his teammates. But it was still _a lot _of aliens…

"Let's see how you can deal with a smart bomb," he muttered, and pressed a trigger beneath the primary and secondary ones on the joystick. Only Way To Be Sure.

A hatch opened on the Arwing's dorsal end and out spun a small plain cylinder, whirling back at a fantastic rate that was impossible in atmosphere. The Collective fighters following behind didn't immediately register it on their scanners, more intent upon shooting down this pesky Lylatian ship than surveillance; and not even the "GTFOoH!" message transmitted on wide-beam to every Allied fighter in the vicinity tipped them off as it sped into their midst.

And then its timer finished the count-down.

The bomb collapsed in upon itself, as if an internal black-hole spontaneously came to life; then a vast, spherical shock-wave erupted forth from the singularity and blasted out in all directions at near lightspeed. Alien metal crumpled and dissolved as the Collective ships were ripped apart. Those in the rear were quick to fire retros and blast the hell away; similarly, those along the outer edges did the same thing. But the majority vanished, their combat frames changed to space-dust and atomic material. Fox's aft scanners were clear of all alien fighters. Incidentally, he had also damaged part of a Collective carrier, allowing the distant Allied ships firing upon it to destroy the thing completely.

"Good thinking, Fox," Ghostie congratulated, the sound of clapping hands filling the cockpit momentarily.

"This is what we should have done to those tri-fighte—" he muttered.

"And then you and I wouldn't be having this conversation, nor any of your other conversations with your friends, and the Alliance, particularly Lylat, would have suffered a severe blow to morale if Star Fox, one of its best and brightest fighter units, were obliterated just because of a single smart-bomb," Ghostie answered, shutting him up. "Besides, tri-fighters are smarter than vultures or flying wings. What if they had fired trackers armed with smart bombs?"

"You are such a killjoy."

"It's what keeps us alive. No time for heroics, Mr. Fox."

"_Fox, that was awesome with what you did to 'em! Go get 'em!_" came Falco's exuberant comment over the speaker, while Krystal was more pragmatic: "_I'm glad you are still alive._" The others of his squadron, however distant they may be, chimed in with similar statements.

"Thanks, guys," Fox answered, smiling for the first time since launch. "I'm going to Base." His Arwing needed repairs, refuel, and recharge, especially after that outmaneuver of his. He'd used almost all of his primary fuel to jet out of there. Time to get fixed up. Pulling on his 'stick, he angled toward the nearest friendly cruiser, and blasted over.

"_I'll cover for you!_" Falco answered, and for once, Fox obliged him.

"I was about to suggest that. Good job."

At last something he did that Ghostie didn't need to tell him to do.

But when this battle was over, he was definitely getting a new A.I. Or none at all.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

"_…And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;/Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,/In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,/Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;/The noise of battle hurtled in the air,/Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,/And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets./O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,/And I do fear them._"

The Empress paused in her reading. Another light beeped upon the throne's arm. But this one was expected, for she had initiated the call herself. _Yet another keystone placed in the arch of a finely crafted master-scheme,_ she thought. Of course, 'tis an afterthought really, not useful for the Collective. Still, an individual needs look after herself.

"Enter," she said, looking up from her book. The distant door slid open and another entered the room. Altruis smiled when she saw what it was, and looked back at the page again.

"_What can be avoided/Whose end is purposed by the mighty_ _gods?_" she continued, waiting for her visitor to reach where she sat. "_Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions/Are to the world in general as to Caesar. / When beggars die, there are no comets seen;/The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes._"

The Queen paused, smiling.

"Indeed, they do," she said reflectively, standing. "Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. 'Tis a shame, really, that these Lylatians are so removed from their distant past."

"Mistress, what is it you want?" asked her visitor, standing respectfully at the base of the dais, its head bowed and hands clasped before it.

"Aha, yes, there you are. I have a most important task for you," Altruis said. "Soon the Alliance will be upon us and I must need to look after my person: but 'tis all for show, I'm sure you understand. Do you know your history?'

"Yes."

Altruis smiled. "Then you will do nicely."

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

A/N: _There are three things I should mention here: two of importance, the last humorous._

_The first is, if you hadn't already gotten your head wrapped around the distances in this chapter, the Moon is about one lightsecond from the Earth, while the Earth is about eight lightminutes from Sol. There are useful diagrams on the Internet that illustrate how far the Moon is from Earth—I've linked a few underneath this story listed in my profile, along with a few others. But it is not only a unit of distance, it is also a length of time. The light your eyes see at 4:30 left the sun at 4:22, while anything that happens on the Moon is about a second or so behind/ahead of us, depending on how you look at it._

_The second is that I believe the use of real-world references/names are quite justifiable for this fiction. Star Fox 64 Einstein's reference notwithstanding._

_And the third and final one is…_

_Have you seen the "Which is Nerdier? Star Wars or Star Trek?" short video by CollegeHumor? My favorite line(s):_

_Vader: "Your special effects are laaame…"_

_Picard: [having a bombastic breakdown] "That is not the point!"_

_Vader: "Yes it isss…"_

* * *

_Reviews are, as always, entirely welcome. :)_


	4. Orwell's Maxim

A/N: _Space Is An Ocean_, _2-D Space_, _Space Is Air_, _Space Sailing_ and _Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale_ will be mocked and/or derided with extremely humorous prejudice. _Rule of Cool_ notwithstanding.

Also, but not to be mocked, _Up To Eleven_. Times ∞

* * *

2A/N: Are you going to see _Star Wars: The Force Awakens_? This'll be the first time, since the Clone Wars movie of '08, that I've seen a SW movie on the bigscreen for myself! This is history in the making, folks. Trailer's coming around October 19th, 8 PM EST (and by the time you're reading this you may have already seen it); while tickets can be preordered thirty minutes after. Officially, tickets will be bought at 7 PM EST, December 17th.

I've chattered enough about it. On with da show! (Next chapter may or may not be influenced by the new movie. ;) )

* * *

NOTE: Beta-read by _Writer of Worlds_ and _h34rt1lly._

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

**_War is Peace_**

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

**_Soviet March_**—**James Hannigan**—(YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud)—YouTube: **_Red Alert 3 Soviet March Remix_** (zakattack1945)

**_In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war…_**

* * *

Three triangular ships flew in formation, moving in tandem with one another, one leading the charge and the others diagonally above and below respectively.

Underneath them, highlighted from portside by the Homeworld's star, there moved a javelin-like warship of the Aslan Confederation, client-race to the Ardan Dominion. Cylindrically shaped with spines arranged like a double-helix round its dark surface, and seven ion-engines pushing it forward, these ships were formidable creatures. Within those spines were missile tubes, laser batteries and long-range kinetic-cannons with enough might to rain death from an hundred megameters away, and escape retaliation; armored with Imperial armors and gravitic shields, able to brush away all but the most powerful of alien attacks, they could easily plow through Collective warships—and with the whole vessel rotating counterclockwise there was always a new attack to surprise the unwary, and virtually nothing to lock on to.

This ship had acquired some damage already—six spines lost, four more falling apart, and great scars upon its armor—but from the endless swarm of missiles and bullets pounding into a nearby Collective carrier absurdly close to it, the vessel seemed hardly impaired. The three bullet-shaped Wolfens ignored the carnage below, gunning more into their engines to get the maximum amount of speed they could for the coming dive; even as one of the carrier's own spines tore off to collide—spectacularly—with the other's shields, the pilots took no notice.

"_All right, gang,_" Wolf's voice crackled from Leon Powalski's speakers. "_You heard the boss—get as close as we can without getting shot down, destroy as much as we can, and try and bring down that Gate in the process._"

"_Really? isn't this what we've been trying to do, Wolf?_" Panther asked, sounding more than a little worried.

"_I'll clarify: we're to clear the way for the bombers. That or use what bombs we've been given. Be careful, though, the "Reds" are dangerous things. Try not to hit anything else._"

"Oh what fun! I remember when we ran that heist in the moons of Regulon-7, so similar it was to this, only instead of destroying a Gate, we had to fly through one—and it was malfunctioning!" Leon cackled, forcing his squadmates to turn down their radios. "Hey, Wolf, remember the fun we had in trying to survive it?"

"_Yes, yes, I remember, Leon,_" came Wolf's weary answer. "_Stay focused._"

"But I am focused! You see, there's nothing more focusing than a fight to the death! Like when—" Leon smoothly pulled on his joystick, and along with the rest of Star Wolf, soared down to the Aslan warship's portside; there appeared another explosion on her underside, far from them. "—Like when when we guarded mad Andross's palace during the War, and battled little ol' Star Fox. Such a fight we'd never had since then. Of course, as you well know, I was playing around with little Star Fox, letting them score hits on me and even—oh the horror!—allowing that silly bird to shoot me down!"

"_Yes, yes, we've heard it all._" There was a growl. "_Do you have to keep reminiscing?_"

"Of course, of course! It not only makes me fight better, but also paints the firm picture in our enemy's mind that I am no good for "indoctrination": thus I am earned a swift death—should that ever come to pass," he added, grinning cheerfully though no one could see it. "Until that happy moment comes I shall keep taking them with me!"

"_Dive—now!_"

The Wolfens spun around in an aileron roll, affording them a clear visual of the entire battlefield (insofar as they could see it), before, on the next roll, diving down into the greater battle below. This maneuver changed the perspective of the battle entirely—the Aslan warship was no longer on the same angle and spatial level as they were: it had now been flipped onto its starboard side, and they were flying, not along its length, but across its width to port. Of course this was without taking into consideration that it was a cylinder and constantly rotating as well, and thus no matter how many orientations done (save for aft or bow flights), it always presented the same side to an enemy.

This, however, did not hold true for every other ship out there, for everything had changed perspective—again. For instance, the warships currently surrounding Star Wolf's opening never kept to the same spatial plane or even the same orientation as did fighters. No, they were every which way—upside-down, rightside-up, vertical, horizontal and all over the XYZ axis—and moved with as much freedom as fightercraft did, furthermore, only with more difficulty because of their size. And it didn't help that they were as bizarre-looking as weapons-satellites, all points and sharp angles, all of it done for maximum firepower coverage.

As Leon, Wolf and Panther sped—not "downwards"; it was always "straight" for them—toward the great glowing Aparoid Gate, followed by half a megawing of bombercraft, an Ardan destroyer below (seemingly on her side in relation to them) went nova as her shieldings failed and armor crumpled like melting cheese, literally. The force of the explosion sent thousands of glowing fragments in every direction, some to collide with Allied defenses, others to burn through enemy forces.

And, naturally, some came straight for them.

True to form Star Wolf and her charges changed orientation together and fired lasers into the inferno beneath. Their shieldings were strong enough to survive the detritus of battle floating about, yes, but not when these same things were superheated and propelled by an out of control reactor. Thus their goal was to either deflect or break down each shard of adamantine plating into a more manageable size that flew toward them.

Eventually the natural speed of the fighters carried them out of the danger zone, and as one they resumed their original orientation and continued on with renewed force. It was fortunate that none were lost.

"_Gate's coming up in two-point-one lightseconds,_" Wolf said, angling his fighter to starboard to allow the bombers a clear field of fire. His unspoken command was clear: you all have one shot at this. Screw up and billions more will continue to die.

Leon grinned as he flipped his targeting scopes onto where the Aparoid megastructure would soon appear in full. Everything hung on this maneuver and yet he couldn't help but be amused at the irony of _Star Wolf_—of all the people—being trusted enough to carry out this critical operation. All the great battlecruisers around him flaring up into nothing; each destroyer that blew up or collided with an enemy (such as one pair to his dorsal); every frigate squadron attacking foes larger than themselves—all of them were merely screens for this little fighter group. Screens for Star Wolf.

Imagine that.

But regardless of all that nonsense he had his job, the others had theirs. Destroy or be destroyed. Simple enough really.

When the glowing-not-glowing void that was the Gate hove into visual view he could see hundreds of aliens still pouring out of it as before in all directions: the only difference was they were going out the opposite side, and that surrounding it were Ardan, Klingon, Minbari and Tau'ri ships doing their damnedest to land a hit. Unfortunately they couldn't penetrate far enough to reach the megastructure properly as hundreds of Collective vessels were actively forcing them away, not only through conventional means but also crashing into them.

"_Fir—Incoming!_"

A massive cuttlefish destroyer, three times larger than its kindred, appeared before them, its gravitic engines pushing it from above to hover in front of the Gate, arms outstretched and superlaser charging. In that same moment a swarm of alien fighters detached from its armor and converged upon them. Hundreds of Allied craft disintegrated as alien lasers pounded into them and the element of surprise was lost—the bomber formation was scattered as pilots tried to adapt to the sudden attack, to no avail. Many died without knowing what had hit them, Wolf's yell their only warning.

"_Break up, retreat!_" Wolf ordered, clearly seeing that it was futile to continue, and sped away, wasting an Aparoid flying wing as it locked onto a damaged bomber. The _Black Rose_ and the _Rainbow Delta_ formed up behind, escorting the craft away from the death-zone now filled with a sheer column of red blasting outward from the destroyer. With Star Wolf's surprise lost, alien cruisers had begun to turn their antifighter guns onto them, further wasting the megawing; and, furthermore, not caring if their own were hit.

"_Leon, Panther, stay on me,_" Wolf said, static crackle blurring his transmission. "_No need to spread out the "Reds" any further than we have to._"

Neither _anthropos_ objected. There was also another reason for retreat: if just one of the mysterious "Reds" every bomber (and fighter) carried were to detonate, they'd all be destroyed. Not only them but the screen of ships that _had _formerly provided cover would be wasted. And none of it would reach the Gate—or, if it did (slim as the chance was), the destruction wouldn't have much of an effect to change the course of battle.

High above to their port several flying wings disembarked from a nearby carrier and "drifted" down to where Star Wolf flew, moving through space as eerily as deep-sea creatures. Globules of plasmic energy went forth from them, sparkling greenish-white in the night, and began felling ships one by one. A bombercraft to Leon's portside and aft disintegrated, her reactor going critical; a second later another one blew, her starboard engine sliced off.

"'Scuse me, fellas, I gotta problem to take care of!" Leon called out, completely forgetting they could hear him fine.

"_What the—? Get back here, Leon, that's an order!_"

Too late, he wrenched his joystick and his course changed—and the engines blasted him down. Now it was as though his teammates were going vertical, easy targets for any fighters that saw them like that. Wolf's cursing fell away as radio signals faded away, the range too great to reach receptors. The four Aparoid fighters—one of them a flying wing with laser-damage upon its starboard wing—altered course, turning away from the bombercraft, and dove after. Leon watched as his screen showed upon a multicolored diagram the fighters lining up behind him, angling their sights to lock on. He grinned evilly.

Just as a warning beep sounded, the chameleon jammed a button—_whoosh!_—and released his surprise.

Too late, two of the fighters tried to swerve out of them way to no avail. Soundless explosions marked where they had sped headlong into the space equivalent of caltrops, self-exploding metal spheres that sent out spines every which way at supersonic speeds, shredding shields and armor. The _Rainbow Delta_ was moving too fast, and away furthermore, for any of these to reach him.

Two left.

His grin growing wider he grabbed his 'stick and jerked it hard—the _Rainbow Delta_'s rear angled hard to port as bow-jets forcibly flipped it around (no need for fancy gyroscopes to do all the work here! why, they always had a tendency to fail at the worst time), and now faced the Aparoids head on—and released a furious flurry of lasers, disintegrating the single ship still pursuing him.

_What?!_

Leon blinked as he shot forward, all scanners—visual, heat, radar—showing absolutely nothing of the second fighter. What manner of trickery was this? His eyes instinctively flicked over every screen, and still nothing showed. _Where the hell did it go?!_

"_—G—Get…ck—ere!_"

The chameleon pretended to ignore the crackling static that was his radio—he'd forgotten that the caltrops also contained chaff-pellets, breaking up communications, and what with all of the interference around him it was a wonder anything had gotten through. His eyes continually swept from side to side as he barreled onward. _Where was that—?_

With muffled _whumps _angry lasers pounded into the _Rainbow Delta_'s shields, sending shivers through the craft's frame. Alarms blaring around him Leon pulled into a portside dive, spinning all the way down in an attempt to both locate and evade the fighter. "So you want to play with sneaky Leon do you now, little Aparoid?" he asked his radio, letting a chuckle escape. "Two can pla—"

_***Crack—WHUMPH***_

"—Ouch! that hurt, you know!" he screamed with fury.

Now the battle-field resembled, to him, a rapidly spinning globe's interior as his ship went a-spinning from the missile blow; a gyroscope had malfunctioned through intense vibration, preventing him from re-righting his ship properly. _How was it doing that?!_ He was _the_ Great Leon, and he was not about to be outsmarted by a stupid drone!

Behind the spinning _Rainbow Delta_ as it careened through space like a lopsided comet, gasses and fuel spilling out in a crystallizing stream from its aft, the damaged crescent-shaped Aparoid carefully aligned its targeting parameters upon it, each reticle latching on like a sucker. An internal signal informed the wing's brain, half-organic and half-synthetic, that it was in position, and the countdown sequence initiated a moment later.

_5._

_4._

The sequence, moving at a rate more swiftly than the average _anthropinos_' brain could register, was to allow for any corrections or deviance in the target or the flying wing's own body. Should a misfire occur (rare as it was) the wing could abort the missile launch before serious harm came to it and rely upon its laser weaponry instead; or, should these fail—overheating, superconductors melting, gun barrels not emerging for whatever reason, etcetera—change to kinetic weapons and resume the fight.

_3._

_2._

The wing did not, could not, glory or gloat in the coming elimination of an enemy. That was unnecessary; emotion was irrelevant; it served no purpose in its programming. Neither did it feel a desire to avenge its fellows. The _Rainbow Delta_ was only a target to be destroyed, with atomic clockwork-precision, before moving onto another enemy. Nothing more, nothing less.

_1—_

It happened all in a blur: the wing released its missiles and exploded in a ball of superheated gasses and flaming metal together; a flurry of lasers filled the intervening spatial gap between the crippled _Rainbow Delta_ and her pursuer; and two Wolfens zoomed through the death-zone, crossing one another in a flat-scissors maneuver, and ending on opposite sides of the other.

"_I told you not to break ranks, Leon,_" Wolf's dry voice came through the speakers, his ship hovering to Leon's portside. "_Because of your risky antics we had to call for Rottweiler Squadron to take over so we could get you. Don't push it._"

"Right, boss," the chameleon answered, sulkily.

The _Black Rose_ flitted over to the _Delta_'s starboard side, and, as it matched speeds, moved such that it was wing-to-wing with it. "_I got you, Leon,_" Panther said, adjusting his controls. "_Hold on._" Little spidery arms extended themselves from the Rose's rear and starting repairing the _Delta_. Eventually the stream of oxygen, gas, and fuel subsided and a patch soon covered the wounds. "_'Tis temporary, Leon, but it should hold you until we get back to the mothership._"

"Thanks…"

"_Don't get ahead of yourself, Leon. That thing used your overconfidence against you. You keep raving about how adept a spacer you are, and yet overshot it right when your life was on the line. This is not Venom, we're not fighting Star Fox._"

"Understood, boss."

"_Good, now let's get moving._"

"Back to the mission?"

"_No. You're going back to the mothership until you're re—oh_ shit! _break-right, break-right!_"

The _Redfang_ twisted away to starboard, turning in a wide circle and into a dive, and ignited its engines a moment later; the _Black Rose_ turned soon after, covering the _Delta_. Leon was slower than the other two, having lost a lot of his fuel in his near brush with death, but in that moment of slowness he saw what it was that frightened Wolf.

Somehow they had ended up back at the Aparoid Gate, surrounded by carnage, chaos and death. The cuttlefish destroyer had moved on, dueling with two Aslan warships of equal size, the remnants of a third floating about them, leaving the Gate seemingly defenseless. Not that it needed it: the portal had changed directions again; and emerging from the glowing-not-glowing entrance was one of the largest alien craft Leon had yet seen, more than capable of doing the job. Shaped as a rectangular hexahedron with scintillating green lights along its grayish-black length, with no distinguishing features apart from rows and rows of spines along her points—and, most prominently featured, three gigantic side and forward cannons each one-third her width—the vast Aparoid Dreadnought was truly an impressive vessel, striding into battle with the majesty of an ancient giant and the fury of an implacable force of nature. Only Ardan ships were her equal. And even as Leon watched it, her forward cannon began charging with arcane energies.

Flying around were millions of smaller ships—cuttlefish destroyers, starfish carriers, cubed battlecrusiers, and tens of thousands of other alien craft of all shapes and sizes—flaring out into battle to join their brethren; but the great majority of cruisers stuck close to the Dreadnought; and were heading toward his position. For all of his devil-may-care personality (bordering on madness, not that he admitted it) Leon did and fully understand that even he was outmatched. A single fighter may have had the luck of the draw in defeating him, but even he was not about to challenge a fresh Collective fleet.

What was more, as the Dreadnought left the portal behind, _another_ one started to come out with _her _retinue of ships following…

He changed course, the massive warships and their fleets slipping away, and barreled after Wolf and Panther. An alarm started screaming, warning that the temporary repairs could not hold together for much long, but he ignored it. That could wait until he made it to safety. As they sped back into battle, passing by three Tau'ri _Daedalus_-class warships launching volleys of missiles towards Aparoid reinforcements, his mind replayed the not-so-recent events of before, namely, the question of _why_ he'd been outsmarted by a stupid drone. What did it have that he did not? No confidence? Bah—it was a machine. Brains? Well…

Actually…

"_Leon, you there?_"

Jumping slightly, Leon answered. "Yes, boss. What is it?"

"_Follow the _Rose_'s lead to the Aquan Frigate. I'll cover you both from behind._"

Up ahead lay their destination—designed like a sphere with a platform inset in her equator, vast "fin-like" wings extending behind that both held defensive weapon batteries and for atmospheric reentry, the gray-green _Aqua Vitae_ was both a medical frigate and a repair facility. She was one of the many fighter transports for the Cornerian Federation's fleet, and as such stayed well out of the firing line, nearly invisible in contrast to the warship mirrors above her.

Hovering alongside her were two gray-blue Cornerian cruisers, _X-02_-class, providing defense against fighter attack. Fortunately, as of now, no ships save Allied ones were flying to and fro from her, coming back—as he was—for repair or flying back out into battle. Underneath the frigate there lay docked an upside-down destroyer, restocking and repairing for battle.

"What about the mission? I can get ther—"

"_Once again, thanks to your stunt we were forced to go after you,_" Wolf growled. "_I do not leave a man behind, even if he is a stupid airhead._"

Grumbling, Leon could only nod.

"_As soon as you're repaired I want you __back out on the field__ ASAP,_" Wolf was continuing, "_and we'll head for the Gate to try again. Got it?_"

"Yes, boss."

"_Excellent—and remember, no more stunts._" Together both the _Redfang_ and the _Rose_ pulled away, leaving him alone.

_Couldn't he tell that the message had gotten through already?_ Leon thought, rolling his eyes as their com chatter faded from his radio. _Really, the nerve._ He could understand his leader's frustration, certainly, but that was no reason to keep slathering it on like a multiple-layered frosted cake. Then again… perhaps it was needed. He wasn't expendable—he wasn't a stupid drone that had somehow still managed to outfly and outsmart him, _him!_ the Great Leon—

"Aqua Vitae_ to _Wolfen X-03_-class fighter, we have you on our screens now. Please identify._"

"This is the _Rainbow Delta_, Leon Powalski, of Star Wolf squad, coming in for—" He checked his readings. "—repairs on engines, fighter-frame, and refeuling. And, er, perhaps some extra armor plating, if it is available?" Good God, he hated to sound like he was begging, but—contrary to Wolf's orders—if he was gonna pull any more "stunts" he needed that extra protection.

"_Confirmed. Please await for tractor-beam lock-on. Stand by._"

Welp, here comes the waiting part, and the perfect time for any Aparoid who thought about it to come right on over and swat him out of the "air" like a fly, caught in pine-sap, if you will, or soon will be. Hurry up, he hadn't all day to waste floating here, doing nothing while about to be destroyed—

"_Stand by, bringing you in._"

_Finally!_ "Took yeh folks long enough," he muttered as, with a jerk, his fighter's controls were seized from him and the entire thing started moving inexorably, like a metal-filling to a magnet, toward a yawning, gaping maw of an entry-port. He could see rows and rows of charged, scintillating lasers waiting to blow up any Aparoid who dared to fly inside. Oh, and a force-field to stop ships moving at high-speed from crashing in and blowing the entire thing up from the inside.

It was the sort of thing Aparoids would do, anyhow. He was no fool. Come to think of it, he'd do the exact same thing if it were him careening out of control toward whatever the Aparoids used for repair-and-refuel. Would serve them right.

He was just moments from entering the bay-doors when three things happened in quick succession:

One, a blindingly white light suddenly enveloped his ship, cutting off sight and sound from all sensors.

Two, he hit his helmeted head against the cockpit fuselage as his ship was violently flung forwards.

And three, he blacked out.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_Several minutes later…_

"Yes, I said _closer_!" Peppy yelled into his speaker, arguing with a CDF captain of a nearby destroyer squadron. "Get as close as you can and engage those battleships at point-blank-range!"

"_At that close range we'll be shredded! Did you see what they did to—_?" the man protested before Peppy cut him off.

"Yes, yes! I saw. You think I'm mad, but aren't we all mad to begin with? You heard the General's orders: take out that Gate at all costs, and by "at all costs" he _meant it_!"

There was a moment's silence, broken by static, as the captain blustered and grumbled but he finally acquiesced. "_By your orders, Captain,_" he answered and disconnected.

Peppy blinked once, twice, then covered his forehead, feeling yet another headache coming on. This sort of thing should be moot by now—four hours into the battle, and they were lucky to have survived for as long as they have, and they _still_ complained? Couldn't those fools see that it was not about self-preservation or stupid heroics but the following of orders that would quite literally save the Alliance from premature defeat?

_I mean, come on_, he thought, exhaling in annoyance. If it were Andross threatening Corneria directly or—the Father forbid—the climax of the Lylat Wars all over again they'd be court-martialed for sure. No wonder mercenary units and paramilitaries were more effective. Of course now this wasn't prewar Lylat, this was battle-tested Lylat filled with veteran soldiers and, by all that was holy, they'd better stop thinking with their asses and start planning with their heads! This wasn't about glory or honor (as in story-books)—no, it was about survival, not of yourself, but of everyone else _other __than _you. Why couldn't they—

"Captain Hare, sir," R.O.B.-64 said, breaking his thoughts. "Cobra Squadron has aligned with our position and is waiting for your orders."

Well, at least that captain saw sense sooner rather than later. Peppy nodded, ignoring the stabbing pain in his head. "Good. Tell them to follow our lead. We're joining with the main battle group and will be going after that Dreadnought. You know the one I'm talking about."

"Affirmative."

Yes, that Dreadnought. The first one which had come out of the Gate and laid waste to Star Wolf's ship-screen. Not that it mattered, given that the formation had been disrupted through Fate's whimsical follies anyhow a minute or two before. But, yet it did matter. That thing was a killer, scans had confirmed—just moments before it'd destroyed four Ardan battlecruisers with one shot and the resultant shock-wave thereof destroyed hundreds of other vessels, scattering the attacking force 'round about the Gate into oblivion: a far more effective killing machine than anything seen before. Perhaps even more effective than the "Reds".

Was it madness to assault that thing? Nay—everything they'd already done was mad enough, so maybe somewhere in a sliding scale of madness?

"Peppy, are you awake?" a voice asked, followed by a comforting hand on his shoulder.

He shook himself, breaking free of introspection. "Yes, yes I am, Fara," he answered, not looking back at her. "Just… just contemplating our fate."

Fara nodded solemnly. She had moved her chair as close as she could without the computer protesting to offer emotional support. "I understand."

"_Of course you do,_" he thought morosely. What do you know of battle? Of pain and suffering? Were you there when Lylat was broken by inept bureaucracy and stupid, career-driven generals and bored troops getting their asses kicked by an ex-scientist—a _rebel!_—who needed Star Fox to save the day? Were you with us when we're about to be annihilated over Venom?

_Now, now, Peppy, don't be a pessimist,_ his conscience told him. _She's only doing what she can do. Don't snub her for that._

"Thank you, Fara," he answered instead, nodding slowly. She smiled, her reflection visible on the monitor. "You're welcome," she said back.

"Cobra Squadron, prepare for attack speed," came R.O.B.'s voice.

_Right…_ Peppy shook himself again and pulled his focus back onto the upcoming attack. Fara retreated to her station behind him, and her hands began flying across the holofield that now enveloped her head, pressing keys in a series of seemingly randomized movements. Peppy inhaled, once, then moved his head back into his own holofield. Immediately his sight was replaced by a series of energy signatures, all flame-gold, encircling him and the _Great Fox_. Further ahead was the chaotic mess of battle, with one energy signature jumping out of all the others in both sheer mass and power, pulsating a sickly green-gray. Behind, "visible" only through sensations in the back of his mind, were other flame-gold energies aligning into formation. And off to his right—starboard—was a vast solid wall of color: the battle-group.

In this position, Peppy was more than the captain of the ship—he _was _the ship. From his vantage point here he could control most, if not all, of the systems by neuralnet, freeing up his cognitive and decision-making areas of his brain for immediate action should it be required. Or, in other words, the ship was his body and he was the brain. This technology wasn't new however; it was standard for all military ships not mercenary units since the Lylat Wars. Only recently was it put aboard: the cost alone was more than twenty _Great Foxes._ It would've bankrupted poor James into an early grave if he were around to see it. That'd be something he'd attempt to wrangle under Peppy's nose, the hare affectionately thought.

It was not bad, though, all things considered.

In actuality R.O.B.-64 handled most of the minutiae of the systems, leaving the fine-tuning for him. Peppy was the true flyer of the ship, and it was his job to keep them on target. Fara's job was the gunner for all the _Great Fox_'s weapons and other secondary bridge-roles. Slippy's job, back in Communications, was simple insofar as that term went: he made sure the ship didn't fly apart.

But it was unlikely they'd fly apart: they were Star Fox, and were some of the best of the best. Time to get into gear.

"_Attack—now!_" came the order.

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

The Cornerian fleet, with the _Great Fox_ leading her squadron off to port, strode into battle several hundred strong.

Hyper-lasers, needle beams and multipulse lasers in shimmering blue streaked forth silently from hundreds of thousands of gun-emplacements, followed by smart-bombs and Katina shrapnel missiles, and tore into Collective ships with extreme prejudice. Cuttlefish destroyers, starfish carriers, cuboids and spheres went up in plasmic explosions, their bodies scattered into subatomic particles and flaming shards. Trillions of alien fighters disintegrated, their mere presence naught but a fleeting vapor in the hellstorm. Entire formations and megawings were wasted, obliterated into nothingness. The might of Corneria was awesome to behold, paying back blood for blood, bone for bone.

Then the Collective struck back.

The Aparoid Dreadnought, one of three, slowly turned as her gravitic engines manipulated surrounding gravity fields, and came around to face the oncoming _anthropoi_ forces. Her forward cannon still shimmered from its previous firing, obviously overheated, but using that was not her pilots' intention—for, even as Cornerian guns thundered away, scoring her armor with billions of marks and scratches from a few millimeters to several feet deep, her primary engines fired up and propelled the monstrosity directly into the swarm.

The first casualties of that seemingly suicide charge were four battleships, _X-03_-class, some of the largest and strongest of Corneria's might. They were crushed instantly as the Dreadnought's hull brushed aside their shield strength and armor integrity as easily as stepping on beetles. Then about an hundred _X-03_-class frigates and cruisers were blown aside, breaking apart like sticks as she barreled forth deeper into the fleet, causing collateral damages in addition to direct impact. It seemed nothing could stop the Collective ship.

But Corneria adapted to the charge, her ships moving around, over and under to lay waste to the warship. Alas for them, it was not to be—the Dreadnought's twin cannons suddenly erupted right as the battlegroup surrounded her. A sphere of crackling energy, black and lime-green with lighter green-whites, burst forth with the warship at the center and dissipated Corneria.

If a black hole's vast gravitic field had been reversed and turned upon the Galaxy in an instant, then this was the effects thereof. It was swift, sudden and painless. One moment a thousand ships hovered in formation, armored and armed like an ancient phalanx of powerful warriors ready to squash all foes; the next, mere empty space littered with fading heat of the blast's pathway. If the Cornerian hellstorm had destroyed Collective ships as easily as if they were melting snow, this was beyond compare, like the heat of a homely fire was to a nuclear detonation.

As the Dreadnought passed onwards, fell and lethal, there shot missile-like projectiles from her scarred surface in all directions to finish the job. They had huddled underneath that armored surface, like the children of some ancient creature hiding under their mother's pitted armor from danger and death. Now they swarmed out as a plague of flies to feast upon the dead. Tombships, Corneria had nicknamed them. They were multipurpose, used both for landing alien troops upon planetary surfaces and boarding enemy craft or installations. For assimilation, of course. In all practicality boarding was useless in spatial warfare, but the Collective did nothing that was considered proper in war.

Nothing.

From far away, from where she had been caught on the outermost fringes of the energy blast before it dissipated, the _Great Fox_ tumbled end over end out into space. Her crew futility trying to "right" it, to regain control of systems suddenly gone haywire. Her passengers, the marines, trying to orient themselves from where they'd been knocked silly.

All of whom were unaware of four tombships making a beeline for them.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_Error: Turrets Offline._

_Error: Turrets Offline._

_Error: Turrets Offline._

As the message blinked on and off again for the fourth time, Fara's eyes opened to a world of red. The holofield was empty of all save the single message flickering before her. All other readouts were dead.

"_Owww…_" she groaned.

"Fara?"

"Yeesh?"

Her words were slurred, even though that shouldn't be possible with both her seat restraining her and gravity null-and-void. Did she hit her head? Or was it the computer backlash?

"Good, you aren't knocked out cold," Peppy answered, sounding relieved, though slightly punch-drunk. "Hold on. I'll be over there in a sec."

She couldn't see him. Nor, for that matter, could she see anything except red. That would be the holofield and the darker colors of that annoying—persistently so—message still flashing before her eyes. Could she turn it off? Hesitantly Fara did the necessary blink-commands, and the words disappeared, to be replaced with others:

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

**Hull Integrity**: 80%  
**Damage Assessment**: Moderate

**Hull Shielding**: 22%  
**Damage Assessment**: Near critical

**Shield Generation**: 0%  
**Damage Assessment**: ?-?-?

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_Oh dear… _

This was not good. They were… what was that phrase? Something about floating targets? Or sitting birds? Oooh, why did her head hurt…

"Fara, Fara, wake up!" That was a new voice, one that hurt her ears. It was too high-pitched. Make it stop, please, make it stop. "No, I will not stop. You need to get out of here."

Finally mustering up the strength to move, Fara tried to punch away the voice—and moaned as pains shot up her arm.

"No, no, this won't do, please, listen to me. You need to stop moving so I can get you out of here, understand?" Fara nodded numbly. "Good," the voice said, and next moment hands were unbuckling her straps and deactivating the holofield still about her head. The last brought noticeable relief: lights stopped flashing in her eyes and her head felt clearer than before. Blinking rapidly Fara looked about the room.

Dimmed red lights now filled the _Great Fox_'s CIC, backup generators compensating for the power-knockout. Most of the viewscreens were inactive, leaving them deaf, blind and dumb to the rest of the outer world; a rare few sparked, though that was mostly from overloaded wires. Apart from her body floating slightly above her recent prison of a chair, Fara could sense nothing else. Not even the ventilation was working (although, admittedly, that was one of the first things to go in battle).

"What happened?" she asked slowly, rubbing her head to ease away residual pains. They were clearing up fast now that she was out of that damned computer.

"Long story short," Slippy began, now floating upside-down and beginning to peck away at a still-active monitor, "the Aparoids knocked us out cold. It's a good thing we were on the outermost edge or we'd be toast. Actually, we're toast anyways. All guns except portside phasers and ray guns are gone; armor's the only thing that'll stop them now, and the shieldings are next to useless. Who knows what happened to them. Can't use engines because—"

"Power's out," Peppy finished, having freed himself earlier and checking screens that glowed. "Life-support is mostly okay though we'll need to get to work if we're gonna survive—"

"Okay, okay, I get it, boys," Fara said, holding up her hands before curling up into a ball to orient herself. "We're drifting dead in space. Did we lose anybody?"

"Surely you didn't mean the entire battlegroup now, did you?"

"Of course not, Slip, and don't call me Shirley."

"Everyone 'board the _Fox_ is alive, if disoriented," Peppy answered, cutting across their bickering. Fara huffed and looked towards him instead. "R.O.B.-64 is offline but I think we can repair him, though it'll mean…" He turned around, somewhat incongruously floating sideways, and shrugged his shoulders. "It'll mean some cannibalization of these systems."

"All's fair in war, Pep," Fara answered, smiling despite the circumstances. She hadn't had the experience of floating freely in zero-g, having always been strapped in a fighter's cockpit or wearing magnetic greaves to anchor herself to the ground because she always felt just a bit queasy without some sort of "up-and-down" to stabilize her. To see Peppy moving around like a spaceborn was something that warmed her inside, even despite the circumstances…

"_Brrr…!_"

"Bundle up tight," Slippy said cheerfully as Fara hugged herself, barely restraining a chatter from escaping. "It's gonna get cold."

"What about you?" Slippy was an amphibian, a cold-blooded animal, and couldn't rely on sweaters or insulation to keep him warm. No, he'd slowly turn sluggish and eventually stop moving, and then from there it was a short trip to death's door. "How're you going to—?"

"Hey, heaters!" he said, still cheery. "Biothermal heaters, right here." He patted his suit. "All of us coldbloods are required to have them so if the power goes out, like now, I'm safe. And to think I used to need a heated chair in my Arwing."

"Heaters or not, we need to repair life-support," Peppy interjected, floating over to them hurriedly. "It may be funny now but things will be really cold soon if we don't fix it."

"I thought you said it was oka—?"

"It _is _okay, but mostly okay. There's a difference between mostly okay and all okay, and mostly okay is rapidly becoming not okay. Slippy, I'll need you here to help repair R.O.B.. Fara, see what you can do about the life-support."

"Mr. Over-Emphasizer, I am a gunner, not an engineer," she began before he waved that aside.

"Now don't go McCoy on me, but in here you're useless."—(Fara blinked: _useless?!_)—"Those marines are good, but even they can't be everything. You're our Jack-of-All-Trades here—err, Jill-of-All-Trades—so you have the skills to fix it. I'd join you if I could but I'll need to coordinate with R.O.B. once he's online." Peppy turned and hovered up and over to a hatch and started fiddling with its lock.

"_Fine…_" she grumbled. "But—"

_Clang!_

All of them looked where it came from, to the back of the ship and down.

Fara gulped, straightening out her body as she looked through the Communications door. "I think we'd…"

"Yeah, here, take this." Fara looked up and caught a pulse-rifle drifting toward her. A moment later there came a smaller handheld variant. "For if you run into aliens," Peppy said, latching several pistols to his own legs and arms. Slippy selected a gun of similar make as Pep's from the open hatch in the ceiling… or was that the floor? "Also, take these." He tossed her a flat briefcase-like container which she promptly caught. Inside were tools, all light-weight.

"Understood. I'm off." With that Fara clipped the briefcase to her belt, holstered the pistol and shouldered the gun—it weighed next to nothing in the zero-g, even though it had to've been five kilograms—and pushed off through the open door and down the corridor. Good thing all the doors here were both automatic _and_ manual, or she'd have to blast her way through. She drifted through the circular (and empty) Communications-and-Ops Center, its HDC table a faint cyan color, and toward the central back hatch where the nearest life-support system was located. It also opened onto the rest of the ship.

It was then it came: another _clang_, followed by a third.

The impacts sent shivers throughout the ship, and as they receded, left behind an eerie silence. Fara stopped, hovering still, her rifle unlimbered and pointed at the door. "Peppy?" she called back.

"What?" he yelled, voice slightly muffled from who knows what he did.

"Can you see anything in the corridors?" She meant the cameras.

Before he could answer echoing reports of fire, kinetic and laser, reached her ears—and, most disturbingly, distant screams. Gulping again Fara approached the hatch and turned its locking wheel to open it, gun before her. When the wheel clicked she hesitated, waiting, then pushed it open.

Nothing came reaching for her, no claws, no blades or globules of flaming energies flying her way. (Neither, she realized with a thrill of horror, did her body get sucked out into the vacuum of space. _Stupid girl, what were you thinking, not making sure it was first pressurized!?_) The corridor, a hexagonal passageway braced by jutting walls with red lights, was empty; although when the door was opened the distant gunfights somehow seemed to be nearer.

Cursing both her shortsightedness in preparedness and the technicians who didn't think to install an independent life-support in Communications (_or even the bridge, come to think of it_) she moved forward cautiously. Still nothing came. By now her teeth were chattering, and shivers racked her entire body, urging her to get a move on. Gritting her teeth to stop them from making more noise she approached the power-unit—wedged incongruously between two jutting barriers—opened it, and started fiddling around, a flashlight shining from her helmet, oddly grateful to those same techies for installing a second backup generator for permanent usage here too, in case the main one couldn't be fixed. Beside her the gun floated close by, attached to her by a semi-intelligent A.I. cord.

To her relief the damage wasn't so bad—just a tinkering here, a twiddling there, a burnt-out coupling to be replaced down here, and a few others and power would be restored. At least to this section of the _Great Fox_. Deck A, wasn't it? Yeah, that's right. Then Decks B, C, D and E. Good thing the _Fox_ wasn't so big. Wait… just _how_ big was it? Well, the hanger-bay was enormous for one thing. Had to be to hold fifty Arwings, plus quite a few land and underwater vehicles. Wait a sec… that was _pre_-Aparoid Invasion, right? Or did the computer frazzle her more than she thought?

"Peppy," she called, "power's coming on in three, two, one… _now!_" She pressed two wires together—

_Fizzsat!_

—and the primary lighting, the ventilation and, most importantly, the heating systems turned back on. She exhaled a sigh, not quite believing it. Should her luck hold they may be able to get this thing running again. _One down, several more to go_, she thought, turning with her gun before her—

—right into a squad of skeletal-looking Aparoid roboids, eyes glowing as bloodred as the emergency lights of before.

Releasing a scream Fara pressed the trigger hard, and a spray of red blasted forth into the hallway. Two of the spindly roboids immediately fell, one's head flying down the hall (clanging against a jutting wall along the way). A third's leg was blasted off, disorienting the mechanoid and rendering it useless before another shot blew its central core into oblivion. The others however dodged the beams, darting behind cover or minimizing their target area, and returned fire.

Kicking off the floor, Fara flew back into Communications and stopped herself by grabbing hold of the hatch, still firing at the machines. As another one was sent floating willy-nilly, she grabbed and slammed the hatch between her and them—but not before a red beam slammed into her dominant arm, at the shoulder join, with the force of a nerf kicking her.

Slippy and Peppy were quickly on the scene, each sporting a pulse rifle. "What happened? We heard gunfire—"

"_Aparoids!_" Fara screeched in pain, coming to rest against the HDC and cradling her arm. "Aparoids! Right here, right outside the door!" She pointed, winced, and immediately stuck her hand back into the hole.

Whatever color he had regained immediately drained from Peppy's face. He flew over to the wall, on the hatch's left, and activated his greaves. His feet clanged to the wall. Slippy however went low to the floor, using forearm as well as leg magnets to pull himself over to Fara, who lay wedged into her slot. "How many were there?" the amphibian asked. "Six, eight?"

"I don't know it looked like ten or twenty!"

"Calm down, Fara," Peppy admonished. From where he stood he was looking up at their sideways bodies, looking completely ridiculous if the circumstances weren't so dire. However he was at the perfect vantage point too—should the hatch be breached, the mechanoids would be coming _up _into his _down_, excellent targets. "So we're outnumbered, and from the looks of things they must have overpowered the marines. Did any of them look assimilated?"

"How would I know?" she asked, still breathing hard. "They all looked metal and brown to me."

"That last collision was closer to us than the others," Slippy pointed out, his eyes flickering between the door and Peppy. "These could be the CIC detachment, sent to mop up."

"Good point," the other agreed, listening. There came no sound out there except the hiss of recycled air and the still distant firefight for the ship.

"You think they're waiting for us?" Fara whispered.

"One way to find out. Slippy, you push open the door—stay as down as you can. Fara, set your gun on auto—"

"It is."

"—Good, now, you fire when Slippy opens the door," Peppy finished.

"Technically it is a hatch," the frog quipped as he inched his way over opposite him. The hare shook his head, ears flopping weirdly in zero-g. "On my mark. Ready?" Slippy nodded, having finished unlocking, and waited. "One—Two—_Three!_"

The frog banged his gun on the hatchway and it flew open, Fara depressed the trigger, and the first Aparoid that had waited patiently to enter was promptly blasted to cybernetic smithereens. When Fara's gun became too hot due to prolong usage it fell upon Slippy and Peppy to keep firing, the latter deactivating magnets and pushing off to get a better angle.

After much noise and flashing and banging was made, they eventually halted firing and the ship was plunged into ringing silence.

"Where'd they go?" Fara asked, slowly getting into a standing position. Her gun dangled uselessly from her arm, hanging at a strange angle in the zero-g, and her hand was massaging the ripped hole in her suit. "Did they just leave a guard here? Why not just rush us?"

At her words the lights flickered once, twice, and turned off again—and this time the darkness was complete. No emergency lights.

"Oh my God…"

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

A/N: In Soviet Russia, vodka drink you.

And I'm gonna go with the fact that Corneria was crippled by incompetent leadership—no relation to the US of A—when it came to military action during the Lylat Wars (and against a true JV team no less). Or, you know, it could be that _Star Fox_ wasn't built with story in mind. That's always a good [bad] thing.

Reviews are fully welcome. This is part of a unit of chapters like the previous two, so the next one is going to follow it along the same route.


	5. Orwell's Maxim—II

(Chapter completed sometime in late January-early February of 2016.)

A/N: _Star Wars: The Force Awakens_ is everything a Star Wars fan could ask for. Saw it on opening day with my newly restored eyesight (oh, that is a story for later) and it was pure awesomeness; and spawned a future thing for this very story, believe it or not. Now let the fanfic chaos commence!

On a side note, this has to be one of the most thoroughly edited chapters I've ever done. Seriously.

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_**Freedom is Slavery**_

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_**Bow to No One**_—**Michael Salvatori; C. Paul Johnson; Skye Lewin**—(YouTube, iTunes, SoundCloud, Amazon)

_**"Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery."**_

* * *

The air misted before Line Officer Eruwen as she breathed, spreading outward into a faint cloud, then fading. It was cold to her skin, flat, and stale tasting but with no native moisture—all was reclaimed by life-support. It also never moved. Ventilation was on the extreme end of usefulness in a warship. Wishing for something different would have no effect; nothing would change. In space—never mind spatial combat—energy was priceless, and energy wasted on trivialities was energy that could be used for something else, lost. Eruwen was no stranger to frugality.

Mere comfort was secondary. Functionality was all that was asked—was needed—for. Everything to do the job required. Ship and creature alike designed together. She had never been on a planetary surface before in her life, and had never felt the wind, never felt the naturally refreshed and warmed air; never felt the gentle touch of rain. She was born, had lived, and may now die entirely, in space. It was what she was built for. Doing her duty either in warships patrolling the Ardan Dominion's territories, or in her old orbital school of long ago, teaching other hopefuls like her: her first home in memory. What did comfort matter to someone like her?—she lived to serve her family, her people, and above all, her country and Emperor. That was reason enough to live.

_Hiss!_

The doors before her split apart and withdrew into the walls, cyclic pressures compensating for the sudden shift in atmospheric volume: the change from compressed corridor to cavernous chamber. Before her eyes, remote as distant stars, lay a gigantic field of outer space that was sharpened and enhanced in a way ordinary light could not do. Faint, concentric circles outlined in a grid-like pattern of squares hovered motionlessly, made visible to show that this was not real. It was a three-dimensional projection designed to mimic reality. There were no windows on a warship—those introduced structural weaknesses to the hull, especially armored craft. Immense shielding power would be required moreover to protect crew against galactic and solar radiation given a free pass through transparency. And light only traveled so far, rendering the need for windows obsolete. So why waste energy when one can do without? Even the _anthropoi_ knew of these dangers.

"Ah-ten-_shun!_ Officer on deck!"

That voice was not hers; it came from a dais which extended a little ways out into the star field, resembling, viewed either above or below, a horseshoe-shaped trident with consoles and computer banks set thereupon, where the controls which manipulated the projection lay. No chairs on the central platform above, where her station was. The star field dimmed away into night, leaving behind only the artificial glow emanating from the dais. Upon thereof stood five persons, alert and ready.

Striding forward, her footsteps now the only sounds in the room apart from the closing portal behind, Eruwen went until she stood before her fellow officers. "At ease," she instructed. They went to parade rest. A resounding chorus to both sides indicated a larger commanding force responding in like manner. "We've no time to waste," she continued briskly, not one for preamble. "The Cornerian _anthropoi_ have lost their primary battlegroup in the attempt to disable or destroy the Collective jumpgate. Now it falls upon Arda to complete their task. Understood?"

They all responded with heartfelt _ayes!_, their left fists thumping the chest in affirmation. She copied their manner.

"Execute!"

They snapped to attention once more, then turned together and went to their stations, a little ways below her own, offering her a complete and commanding view of the projected battlefield that would appear shortly. Waving a hand in the air, invisible computers tracking the intricate movements made by her fingers, myriad holos floated into being as the field changed abruptly for battle: ranks upon ranks of lights materialising, miniature solar systems of color forming into substance, datastreams coalescing as water in zero gravity. Her fellow officers activated their computer terminals one by one as they took their seats, their own lights showing up before her; the commanding force's holographic galaxy appearing after them, forming a kaleidoscopic crown of myriad, shifting light all about her.

Several elongated ovals, no larger than a small canine, appeared in the projected field shortly as the projection activated, all facing the same direction. Featureless, identical, and powerful, Ardan warships far outranked their lesser neighbors in every avenue possible. There was nothing to indicate standard ship classes, for none existed. They all acted according to their battle commander's design. No need for specialization. "One size fitted all" was their mentality.

Where Corneria, Qo'noS, Romulus, Rylos, Minbar and all of the rest relied on their warships to transmit data to fighter units to launch coordinated attacks, Arda was different. She never wasted millions of personnel upon starships, never put countless crews and officers into duty aboard each of her monolithic vessels. Her technological sophistication was too high above her little neighbors to allow for such careless usage of lives: too many variables in play, too many things that could go wrong. Any loss would throw the chain of command into disarray and confusion, as invariably happened one far too many times already for the lesser beings.

No, for every hundred warships out in the field, there was one commanding force to guide them. Only the minimum of crew to ensure the ships ran smoothly and perfectly—espatiers to prevent boarding attempts; non-combat personnel to keep the modular systems up and going. Even fightercraft were designed to be efficient: out of every hundred thousand would there be an actual, living person among them—built into their more specialized craft as a cybernetic creature, much like the Collective—to guide the countless drones that moved like the enemy to attack like the enemy, and that was merely a fail-safe should the primary controller lose them.

In this way, rather than have billions of neurons firing off to think thoughts, however many thousands of inventions and innovations resulting from it, a small group of minds linked together into a single entity and acting in concert worked far more impressive wonders. If one was lost, that was noted and they adapted to it seamlessly and thoughtlessly, like a mind but one which evolved as it thought, and continued as before. Therefore operations that would be spread across hundreds of lightyears apart could work together, through the ansible of course. This was how Arda had waged war for centuries; this was how she survived throughout the long millennia of her existence—ever since she'd settled into her new home.

Their enemy, however, matched them.

"Deploy drones," Eruwen ordered, reaching outward with her hands as if to draw the field forward and pushed aside.

"Yes, Ma'am."

The field rippled and shifted—for a moment, fighters poured out like a nanite cloud of silvery dust from their homes to encircle the fleet—the next, the simulation raced outwards, pushing them all behind. The circles sped toward her with alarming speed, blurring into a cylindrical tunnel of silvery white light, and the grid of squares became invisible. Explosions appeared for an instant in the field before vanishing, looking like pinpricks of flame in the night; reflections of what might be destroyed ships from Corneria's ill-fated charge flashed briefly before they too were swept away. And then they all stopped.

In a mere second Eruwen had traveled the distance of four light-minutes of simulated space.

Now before her, four times her armored body's height, hovered the jumpgate. A million ships were still drifting, massing, clustering 'round about it; for all of the show of lights and silent bangs Corneria had done, not a dent had been made in its defenses. What was worse, the junk had been collected and now several crudely made shields drifted in zero-g further out, connected by microscopic threads, affected only slightly by the distant Homeworld and her moons' gravity. The simulation showed an ethereal bluish-white circle that was the portal in the very center to better highlight the target. A distortion in the image cause her to shrink it slightly, to reveal caltropic dust and bombs floating even _further_ in space, surrounding the jumpgate in a huge frontline, defensive sphere—revealing just how tiny the jumpgate really was by the time she reached the final defenses, a pinprick no bigger than her closed fist. Enough to deflect any bombardment, either long-range or, if they managed to survive for that long, close-range combat. That was what the warships were for.

But for every defense there was always a weakness. For the enemy's gate was always down.

Rotating the simulation, and outlining the defenses so that they showed up in red (outer), yellow (middle), and green (inner), Eruwen located their one weakness, a necessary one: the funnel-like exits for reinforcing Collective ships, one on either side, opening two large holes that could be exploited. The Cornerian side of the Alliance, Corneria herself and an hundred or so other systems, the Star League which surrounded her, had already launched an all out attack on that formidable fortress, had attempted to breach through those walls without heed of loss to themselves, to achieve through brute force what their smaller, surgical strike force had attempted to do through precision before.

They had done so many times—all had ended, with defeat.

Now Arda would show them how the real masters of war fought. The teacher would demonstrate for the pupil the nature and method of solving the problem.

Gesturing with her other hand, Eruwen made the jumpgate fade back beyond the simulation; then stopped about halfway, fist clenched. Four black ships, several times the size of Ardan ships within the simulation, now dominated the projection within a triangular formation: three surrounding the fourth. Her eyes narrowed: the Collective's Dreadnoughts.

Monstrous things over sixty kilometers in length, shaped like hexahedron coffins turned onto their points, and armed with weapons beyond anything she had ever studied in Battle School, these were the real target. The jumpgate was only a minor obstacle, however important it was, for destroying it meant the end of reinforcements of countless minor vessels. These monsters, however, had the potential to destroy their entire invasion force alone with no backup. One of these ships had proven it was more than capable of taking out Corneria and all of her allies, with only two blasts from its cannons.

Now there were four of them, and nevermind the train of ships following, spreading, multiplying behind like insects.

Retreating back to her fleet's position, Eruwen checked the formations and was satisfied. "Attack pattern Ackbar slash," she said, ship statistics and readouts manifesting as soon the fleet reemerged. "Drone-fighters, form up."

The forty-strong fleet divided into four line-formations, each ship two hundred kilometers or more behind the other, and moved forward. The fighter-craft deployed into a vast, circular oval pattern, slowly rotating about their mothership, and moved with them as living shields—each group also formed a barrier before their warship and spread behind, like a sheath, to divide when forward attacks were initiated. Unlike the Ardan battlecruisers, the drones relied on ion propulsion just like Corneria—what was called the VASIMR drive—and their mothership's gravitics to move them. The difference, however, was both more efficient and advanced usage of the technology and that drones were replaceable. They were designed that way—to swarm, defend, and attack relentlessly. They could be replaced easily. Lives were not.

"Firing forward cannon," came Handassiel*, one of her senior commanders, and commanded the central line—the other three had arranged into a triangular pattern about her ships, to mirror the Dreadnoughts; the fifth controlled the drones along with the rest of the CIC. Her cruisers slowly charged up the strength of their attack, each ship firing forward, using the other as a conductor—then the charge reached its apex: "Beam discharged—impact in four seconds," she reported.

Eruwen rotated the simulation, now viewing it from the enemy's line of sight off to their port. It showed everything in real time, allowing for quick and efficient decisions to be made; plus a good view if one were into that. (Ansible technology did have some advantages over fighting blind.) The cannon blast, appearing as a thin, white line of focused energy, inched its way toward the Dreadnoughts. Then it halted, "splattering" against a shield a good lightsecond out from the actual warships. _Good_, Eruwen noted, retreating back. The enemy's shield generation was impressive and it remained, moving forward at the estimated speed of the Dreadnoughts, now glowing red.

"Finion," she called to the drone commander on her lower left. "Send squadrons one through seven 'round about them; target their engines and scatter their support ships."

"Copy that."

Seven large groups up forward ignited their blue drives, split away from the drone ovals, and melted into one amorphous mass, flying before Handassiel's line. It served two purposes: the one was her orders; the second to act as a secondary shield if the Dreadnoughts fired at the Ardan lines. Drawing them "closer" Eruwen was now among the drones themselves, their drives looking like several million glowbugs in the void that was the star field. They flew with ease, deftly avoiding debris and random chunks of rock that somehow survived for this long, always keeping together and never losing cohesion. Then they split up into a vast formation like that of a spider's web, firing as one.

"Enemy has deployed fighter-units," Finion reported moments after. "Splitting into twenty one units." Eruwen nodded slightly. The main force would engage the alien fighters and forward ships while certain others would avoid combat and continue their original mission. And there was that vast Dreadnought shield to avoid; it might not stop physical entities but it was better to be prepared than not.

She pointed at one particular drone—it highlighted green—and controls appeared before her. Several others popped into being around her, to allow the commanding of this particular subunit of two thousand if she needed to. Which she did—the whole formation glowed green, with her current, central fighter a darker color. As Finion destroyed the remaining alien fightercraft, with relative success, she maneuvered her ships around and continued forward.

Sometimes the best way to command was to go in and take control yourself.

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_Aparoid Dyson Sphere…_

"_All right, boys and gals, let's do this!_" came Fox's voice over the intercom. A chorus of _Ayes!_ resounded at his words, full of the pilots' confidence and mettle, those of Blue Wing and of Star Fox the leader in this assault. "_Keep steady, shoot straight, and stay out of the cruisers' firing solutions. Let's go!_"

Fay gritted her teeth as the launch catapult shot her out into space again, her recently acquired _Gunstar GS-S10_-class fighter feeling odd under her control. Her Arwing had worn out a run or two ago, and moreover had several burnt-out components that hampered its ability to perform effectively, necessitating a replacement ship. Fortunately (and unfortunately) the Star League had many extra fightercraft to spare and so instead of getting rotated with a fresh crew she was sent out again, this time with a copilot, a somewhat reclusive Doberman who took orders well and was skilled in the handling of alien technology, but otherwise was silent.

Most of Blue Wing had been replaced with Gunstars as well, their controls still new for the pilots (and gunners) to handle. Strictly-speaking, they were extraordinarily different from trans-atmospheric craft, being solely built for space-flight and -combat only, and would normally have posed problems for the earthbound and earth-thinking _anthropoi_ of Lylat had not the Star League trained most of the pilots beforehand in preparation for this invasion. Star Fox's ships had been replaced exclusively by Gunstars—except for Fox, Dash and Krystal—and of all only Falco had any problems with a copilot (Fay could still hear them arguing): but even with their A.I. assisting, these ships were entirely new creatures for all of them.

Aligning into a decahedron-formation Blue Wing dove back into battle raging around the Aparoid Dyson Sphere, their primary target for the past four hours. Persistent shelling and sorties had rendered many of the battlestation's heavy cannons inoperable, allowing the Cornerian and Klingon/Romulan ships to get closer and more effectively bomb it. Far from resembling the pristine sphere of before it now had great scars torn across its surface, opening irregular canyons and deep craters within. But it was not dead yet—nothing less than the complete destruction would satisfy High Command.

"_Hey there, Fay, you hanging in there?_" asked a voice suddenly as they went. "_Adjusting all right with your partner?_"

"Yes, Miyu, I am, thank you," she answered, hearing chuckles echo in her headset. "What about you?"

"_Oh we're having a grand time, me and little Timothy here—oh all right, moderately sized Timothy. How about you? made friends with yours yet?_"

"No, not yet…" Even as she spoke Fay glanced down at the Doberman; he did not give any indication he was listening to her conversation, his gunner pod moving as he scanned all angles. "I wouldn't press him."

"_Whaaat? What's this I hear? Fay the ebullient and joyful puppy that I've known since we're little being considerate?_"

"Very funny, Miyu," she answered, but unable to form a smile. It was more than just her being considerate—it was the fight taking its toll on her. Fay had never been in a space battle for as long as this one, and the natural claustrophobia of being in outer space was already getting on her nerves. It was funny how some coped with the stress—for Falco, it was by keeping an ever growing score with Dash (from the sound of things, Falco's copilot had joined in on the fun); for Krystal, well, she was always calm and never showed anything more worrying than the twitch of an eye; for Fox, he just gritted his teeth and dove into the fray, no matter what his emotions were before the battle. Yet for Fay, she had a hard time dealing with it—Warlock was an excellent choice for her, and kept her from falling into despair during the constant runs; but even then it was difficult.

_Most ironic at how the roles have reversed_, Fay thought as she obeyed imputed commands, the screens showing the decreasing distance between Blue Wing and the enemy; already the vibrations of defensive firing solutions were starting to shake her craft.

When not in battle, it was she was the gung-ho and casual one: now look at her. And it was a terrible irony when it came to Miyu as well—moody and irritable when having nothing to do, suddenly turned friendly and playful when she did. It seemed their personalities had done both an about face _and_ a body-switch.

"_Blue Five and Three, keep quiet back there,_" Fox admonished them. "_Less talking, more shooting._"

"_Aye, sir!_" "Aye, sir," both ladies responded, the former exuberant, the latter less so. Then there came the battle-chatter, and all attention was focused upon the task at hand.

"_We're passing through the outer shields—_"

"_Heavy fire coming from the north hemisphere, bow-port-ventral—_"

"_Watch for friendlies, swerve—_"

"_Enemy squadron coming from above, forty degrees—_"

"_Avoid those towers—_"

"_Watch for overlapping solutions—_"

Slowly but surely, led by Lieutenant McCloud's expertise in spaceflight, Blue Wing made it intact down to the surface of the Dyson Sphere, avoiding the worst of the flak-fire and slipped under the radar of passing squadrons. Now the 3D of space—up, down, length, breadth, depth—was replaced with a definite "up/down" orientation: the vast, curving landscape of grey and white, pockmarked by towers and gouged with canyons. Here Fay was slightly more in her element, and relaxed slightly. From the towers there flew silvery bolts of incredible power, enough to disintegrate several fighters in one hit; from the canyons flew fightercraft of all sizes and affiliation, engaged with battle. Most were not friendly.

"_Break formation, evasive maneuvers—_" Fox began before a spider's web of energy crisscrossed around them; the Collective had picked them up as soon as the ECM had cleared. There came brief screams on the coms before silence replaced them: four fighters were out, blown to atomized plasma. The rest of Blue Wing quickly loosened up, assuming a 2D formation as they skimmed over the matte-grey surface. Now the firing solution was above, the guns having reached their maximum downgrading, and they were safe. Fay's gunner opened up as the mostly Gunstar squadron neared a particularly large tower, one which spewed bolts outward at distant Alliance ships: a volley later and it disintegrated with glorious and deadly beauty. Blue Wing divided, going around and about before forming up again, and pressed on, lasers flying from forward cannons and ripping more gashes in the station. The destruction from the tower had some effectiveness to it—sizzling energy raced across the surface behind them, causing havoc for the point-defense guns. It was funny how the enemy gave one pleasant surprises like that, Fay thought; made it easier in ways. Not that she minded.

The comms-chatter, she could tune out with no real consequence, for it was mostly orders to change position or shift orientations, leaving her to brood in peace. Well, as much as she was able without completely zoning out. It was kind've like a waking dream, the kind where one was asleep and yet knowing they were asleep—or dreaming and yet knowing they are dreaming; or not knowing the difference between dream and reality. This was Fay's world. Apart from her A.I., Warlock, reminding her of orders as they came, lest she forgot, she was alone.

So much had changed in the months since the Collective had come to wage war. So many things had changed. Lylat was no longer able to passively remain ignorant about the outside universe, content to rebuild from the devastation of the Lylat Wars and keeping the SharpClaw Confederacy from taking over Sauria. No, now she had been thrust into a world of interstellar politics and warfare. The Star League were their closest neighbors, and had mostly kept the interstellar peace between the nearby Klingon and Turian nations while the Asari/Romulan alliance further out flaunted their strength just in case _their_ enemy, the Tau'ri/Asgard Union, mobilized with the rest. Then there was the mysterious Ardan Dominion and her client-states, who existed out in far reaches of the Galactic spiral arms, invisible to all except as a whisper until now. So many different nations, so many different alien creatures (alien in so many different ways beyond appearance), and a conflict beyond imagination.

Why had the world been turned upside-down in so short a time as this? Was it some cruel jest of the invisible, immortal gods who loved to taunt mortals with insanity and delusion, or was it the scales of Fate being weighed down by destiny and circumstance? Or was it just a random occurrence of luck and chance—as unlikely as these were to her rational mind—that all of this chaos began?

Why was she being philosophical?

"—_repeat, divert course to sector two-oh-three-five-nine; repeat, divert course to sector two-oh-three-five-nine—_"

Her head jerking about, and waking back to consciousness, Fay nodded to the bobbing eye of Warlock and shifted course to follow the rest, just barely remaining within formation. New orders had been received: a large gash had been deepened enough to reach the vulnerable core of the Dyson Sphere, and all available fighters were to converge.

_What, the cruisers unable because of cuttlesquid getting in their way?_ she thought morbidly. Just why did fightercraft have to have the most dangerous assignments? No doubt they would have to fly into the gash and attack the core directly, because of both their size and numbers. Yeah, that would be fun, very fun indeed. Fay may not be one of those military consultants aboard the _Queen_, but she had seen all of the science-fiction flicks that had to do with an impossibly large megastructure with this one vital weakness that always required a group of tiny fighters to go in to get at. And just about all were destroyed, even with the enemy suffering under the Stormtrooper effect, with one lucky fellow (or a few) managing to survive and blow the enemy base sky high.

Humph. Just her luck.

"Are you feeling well, miss Fay?" Warlock queried, eye shifting colors in concern. "You seem tense, and more than usual from battle-stress. Is it some form of repressed PTSD coming to the fore from a previous engagement?"

Fay smiled faintly at the A.I.'s question. "No, nothing like that," she answered. "I was just reflecting on my luck."

"Luck? I do not understand. What do you consider lucky about this?"

"It is irony, Warlock, nothing literal. Only a suicide would think they're lucky to die."

"Considering the trauma and depression most suicides go through I certainly hope you are not disparaging them at a time like this." Acting the psychologist again, Warlock was—not that Fay minded but it tended to be annoying at the most inopportune times, like now. As she glanced from a screen, which showed towers and phaser spines zipping by, to where Warlock's eye glowed she frowned a little.

"What are you on about, Warlock?"

"I am on nothing. I am perturbed about your mental state. You seem unwell. Perhaps you should retire after this run to get some sleep? I can arrange it to be so when you return. Pilots must be fully alert and in a ready mental state when in combat lest they endanger themselves and their comrades." Fay glanced at the Doberman as he rotated his pod about, spraying death at Collective installations as they passed them. _He has a point…_

"I guess—"

High above the curvature there twisted a flowing squadron of flying wings—raiders—and in a single fluid motion they peeled off from their current vector and dove down. Right below them, speeding along, was Blue Wing and Star Fox. The raiders aligned into formation and fired. Plasmic spheres of green energy streaked down and impacted the Sphere's battered surface—and caught Blue Wing unaware as they flew straight in, like birds into a net. Several Gunstars were hit directly and they went nova, some spinning out of control into space to meet a nasty death at the hands of some other agency or smashed into a thousand, thousand shards upon the metaled walls below, their screaming, dying occupants never knowing what had happened.

Spinning her craft about to face the oncoming enemy, Fay diverted two weapons systems to her control, the central laser cannon and a photon bolt launcher, and fought back. The aliens swerved, moving out of harm's path easily like a school of fish, and rocketed away long before her lasers reached them. One raider was not so lucky and its starboard wing was hit, and it trailed a stream of gasses out, making it easy to track.

One photon bolt later and it was a cloud of atoms.

Fay hadn't realized she was grinning until she saw the Doberman looking at her strangely, the pod having rotated in her direction. She clammed up and looked down at her screen. Red dots were everywhere, mixed in with green dots. Blue Wing was completely scattered. Fay's mouth curled into a grimace as she angled her fighter, firing thrusters to change direction and go back down lest she got caught by the firing solutions. Of all of the things to have been caught by—Fox must be losing his touch. A beeping distracted her immediately—a trio of red dots were coming straight at her, from her aft-port-dorsal.

Spinning her fighter again she magnified her attackers. They were two flying wings and a tri-fighter, flying in formation. "Gunner," she said, "give them hell."

"Yes, pilot," the Doberman replied, his pod rotating again to face in their direction. While the rotation had no effect whatsoever on the Gunstar itself it allowed the gunner to change his own orientation so that everything was always "right-side-up" for him; and it allowed him to control any of the five laser cannons—one bow, two likewise but aside the cockpit, two mounted aft—and twin photon bolt launchers, plus the particle cannon that was meant for heavy combat, with ease.

The flying wings turned and crossed one another, releasing a cloud of chaff that broke up all targeting reticles. When they cleared, Fay had moved on, her Gunstar's forward momentum pushing them forward. And by then the fighters had regrouped and continued the chase, this time ducking and weaving to avoid the aft cannons from locking onto them. "Grrr… slow down, why don't'cha?" Fay muttered, glaring at the screen.

"It's not that that's the problem, Pilot," the Doberman answered suddenly. "It is how they're doing it."

Fay looked closely at the screen, intrigued. There were the fighters, ducking and weaving, seemingly erratic in their movements to confound the computer. All other dots were haphazard, Blue Wing more or less hopelessly scattered by the enemy. And yet…

_Oh dear._

Quickly she slowed down the Gunstar, exerting as many Gs as it was humanly possible for the craft to survive not getting torn to pieces—the occupants would be all right because of Gravity Diffusion technology: it was the ship itself that would suffer the most. They slowed after a delayed reaction, and started to move in the opposite direction at roughly a third of their original speed once their momentum had been dispersed. Caught off guard the Collective fighters swerved to avoid them and sped beyond.

"_Fire!_"

The forward three laser cannons lit up, followed by a few photon bolts trailing after. The fighters disintegrated into space-dust.

"Good work, miss Fay," Warlock congratulated her.

"It was him who pointed it out," she answered, nodding to the Doberman. Then a thought struck her. "Um, what is your name, sir…?" she asked.

"Hugh Beringar," he answered. "Yours?"

"Fay Spaniel."

"An odd surname."

Before she could comment further there blared an alarm, and several more red dots lit up the screen. Fay stopped the ship's current vector and gunned it back to full attack speed, moving forward again. No doubt the Collective had seen that maneuver and the fighters coming after would adapt accordingly. Blips sounded as near misses were recorded, some pinging off of the shields, jarring the ship a little. It was a good thing they were still so far apart that it was only minor hits, otherwise she would have had a problem.

"—_Come in—this is—Blue—lost my gunner—come in, any—_"

Fay frowned, and tapped the headset. Warlock boosted the signal reception accordingly, but only static met her ears. While she felt a faint flicker of alarm at the distress call, there was little she could do beside escorting the bereaved ship to safety and fending off enemies that came by, if she got there in time. "Warlock, you have a lock on their location?" she asked, getting ready to change direction. It was a while before the A.I. answered.

"Yes. I've also identified the craft—_Gunstar GS-S10_-class, numeric designation Blue Five."

Her heart plummeted. "Take me there."

The screen flashed green and she wrenched the steering stick a little too hard, forcefully flipping the craft to her port. Punching the button as hard she could without breaking it the Gunstar rocketed forward at top speed, and Fay and Hugh were off. The red dots pursuing her swerved around widely and shot after like birds of prey going for the kill. While they were still too far away to get lock-ons they tried anyway—the blasts still fell short, the plasmic energy disintegrating before it got anywhere near her; missile A.I. were disrupted as widespread ECM scrambled their guidance systems, and detonated early.

In no time at all Fay reached where Blue Five struggled. Dodging towers and ducking beneath archways to avoid alien guns Blue Five was desperately trying to shake off the two tri-fighters who pursed her. Miyu had indeed lost her gunner—the forward half of the cockpit had been ripped apart and it was only Miyu's spacesuit that prevented her own immediate death as well; enough damage had been done to prevent the Pilot-side from being sealed.

Angling above them Fay maneuvered her craft so it pointed down; and fired. Both aliens disappeared.

"Blue Five, this is Blue Three, what's your status?" she transmitted, angling around to watch for her pursuers—they were still too far away to be of any consequence, yet.

"_Lost Timothy…_" Miyu answered, "_we ran into a cuttlesquid leaving the surface… surrounded by fighters. We… we had to activate Death Blossom. Poor Timothy…_"

"Nevermind about that, is your ship still in operable condition?"

"_Yes… but I can't seal it. I'll have to go for repairs._"

Fay looked over to Hugh, who nodded. "Negative," she said in answer, "stay right there. We'll get you. Is your A.I. still active?"

"_Affirmative._" Miyu's voice was getting stronger, even though it shook. "_Why?_"

"Hold on—docking right now—"

Fay turned her Gunstar about so that it was aft-to-aft with Miyu's. With a clunk both ships magnetically latched together and became temporarily one. This was a recent modification the Star League had done to her fighters, just in case they were not able to reach safety. Warlock began to communicate with Miyu's A.I. and soon sealants and bonding agents had "flowed" over to the stricken fighter, and in no time, patched the holes. Hugh controlled the weapons systems of both craft for the duration of the repair.

"That should hold for now," Fay said. "Atmospheric pressures should be stabilizing now."

"_Thank you, Fay._"

She smiled, hiding her face behind the screen so Hugh wouldn't see it. "You're welcome, Miyu." Her voice became somber. "Did… Did Timothy feel anything?"

"_No, he didn't._" Miyu was subdued. "_We had activated Death Blossom to deal with the cloud of fighters, and then tried to use the particle cannon for the cuttlesquid…_"

"It exploded?" she guessed.

"_Yes, and he was dead before I knew it. Then I had to run for my life._"

"It's all right, Miyu," Fay said. "You couldn't have done anything." With muted clunks the Gunstars detached and floated apart. Turning around so she could inspect her handiwork, Fay nodded when she saw how effective it was. Apart from some singeing on the engines, and the burnt patch of armor where the cannon had been, Miyu was fine. There was no trace of Timothy, the gunner-pod non-existent.

"There is only one way you—we—can avenge him," Hugh spoke suddenly. "We've got to win this."

"_I know._" Miyu's voice was soft. "_I know._"

"See you later, Miyu," Fay said cheerfully in an attempt boost her friend's spirits. The other Gunstar turned away and began to rocket off, engines heating back up. Miyu stayed silent as a blasted tower floated between them. Then she answered:

"_See you too, Fay._"

"Atta girl," Fay whispered happily, bending down to look at her screen—

"_I'm on fire—I'm on fire—I'm on fire—!_" Miyu screamed.

—and shot up again in immediate alarm, senses not registering the staticky scream right away. Then she saw it: a cloud of rapidly dissipating, superheated plasma, alien lasers still flying through it. Then came her pursuers, soaring through like grey birds through a black sky, green bolts flying forth to deal death.

_No, it couldn't be—that was impossible, she was just there a moment ago…_

"Miss Spaniel!" Hugh said warningly, angling himself to fire in their direction as they came. Yet she didn't react, hand still frozen on the 'stick, eyes not moving from the spot where it happened.

"Miss Spaniel! We need to _move!_"

She did not hear him. Instead she heard her own voice, scared and frightened, asking Miyu: _Are you mad at me…? Just… just suppose there is an afterlife… I don't wanna die, knowing that you're mad at me…_

There was no answering voice.

"_Fay Spaniel! we need to move,_ now_!_"

She automatically moved, changing orientation and rocketing away—the alien blasts fell astern and were lost. The aft cannons returned fire, blips marking the alien ships that were hit, and blown. But that was all insignificant now. Nothing could fill that sudden hole inside her, as the awful realization sank in, slowly, inexorably.

_I don't wanna die, knowing that you're mad at me._

"Miyu," she whispered, an invisible tear shed and lost.

_Miyu…_

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_Several lightminutes away…_

Passing around a swan-white vessel drifting dead in space—_a victim of earlier battles?_—her drones glided smoothly onward, and before she knew it, Eruwen was upon the Dreadnoughts. Up close and personal it was easy to feel a little fear at the sheer size of these things, compared to her tiny fighters, but only for a moment.

_Fire_, she mouthed, and imputed the commands. Several thousand shattermissiles released in an instant, the ansible transmitting her order effortlessly, and disappeared into space. _Disengage_. The drones peeled away and scattered, to form up with their brethren further below as they swarmed, attacking like hornets. _Detonate_. With silent flashes the port, ventral side of one alien warship changed into a momentary lightshow as the bombs went nova.

Then it vanished as gravitic shields asserted themselves and brushed the destruction away. In ordinary ship-to-ship combat these missiles could destroy, or at the very worst disable, a typical Collective warship such as the _Harbinger_-class destroyers or _Basestar_-class carriers following behind. Here, gravitic-shields ensured nothing less than beam-weapons of perhaps the highest caliber would reach the armors. Eruwen smiled: analysis completed. She knew some of the capabilities of these Dreadnoughts, however partial they may be.

"Commander," said Handelewen, a junior officer this time, assigned to starboard Dreadnought, "Dreadnought weapons charging. Contact in four seconds."

"Focus shield generation forward, protect Handassiel," she answered, withdrawing to the fleet.

"Acknowledged."

The fleet formations did nothing visible except to continue moving forward at a respectable speed; dialing in a command she highlighted the forming defensive shield, and it glowed blue, turning darker as each ship projected its generation to combine with it. With the four ship lines one lightsecond apart there was a massive area to protect and secure, lest any alien missile get around and wreak havoc upon them, but where Handassiel's forces were the shield glowed darkest, to absorb the coming retaliation.

"Drones behind enemy ships: counting six engine ports each," reported Finion suddenly. "Radiation too dense for direct assault. Heavy resistance from support ships."

"Understood—target the port-casings as best you can," Eruwen ordered.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Center Dreadnought firing."

"Maintain shield integrity—stabilize central generation." Eruwen watched as the Dreadnought beam came closer, one and a half seconds between them now. "Divide now."

Handassiel divided her ships, each one moving along a different vector as easily as being pushed aside in anticipation of shield failure, if it came about. Moments later the destructive beam—which had destroyed so many ships in one firing—impacted the vast shield generation, its immense force grinding away. As the Ardan fleet moved forward the beam's power grew stronger, its blunted energy being replenished as they neared the cannon. Then it stopped, with mere "nanoseconds" between them, and the shield remained: "flickering" because of the forces exerted upon it. Readings appeared before Eruwen, giving approximate calculations of beam strength and integrity while Handassiel moved back, her ships resuming position.

_So the enemy wasn't as strong as they had thought_, Eruwen mused. _Now we are ready for you_. Transmitting the data to all Alliance ships through the ansible, she keyed a few suggestions along with it, then returned to her forces.

"Four thousand kilometers and closing," Meletayaner, junior officer and port Dreadnought, reported tersely. The simulation now showed them almost nose to nose with one another. Batteries of lesser weapons from the Dreadnoughts rippled and energy streaked forth; black dust spawned, their fighters deploying to swarm them. Gravitic shieldings sparkled on Arda's side as they took the blows. With all of their ships aligned in the slash formation, they presented only one ship to the enemy, and with all shield power focused forward they were able to take it. The smaller, lesser enemy ships in the train were caught by the Ackbar slash and obliterated without a thought.

"On my count split in twain, Handassiel," Eruwen said, outlining the expected formation and sending it to her officer. "Loop their ventral and dorsal, avoid those side cannons, and fire all available weapons."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Central Dreadnought's engine ports are down," Finion reported. "She's shifting back to passive gravitics; attack speed slowing."

"Meletayaner, Handelewen, Sairion," Eruwen commanded, nodding at the drone-officer's report. "On my count, copy Handassiel's movement and fire weapons as you pass—three, two, one—now!"

Now the battle shifted. With the central Dreadnought slowing down, the Collective formation they mirrored was disrupted. The three outer ships could no longer support or protect the central one as they barreled forward, still at attack speed, while they themselves would lose its three-dimensional coverage as it fell behind. The Ardan forces would exploit this to the full. Superior tactics in action—no Cornerian admiral or pilot had ever thought of such things before, and they weren't likely to do now.

Copying Handassiel's maneuvers the other three officers divided their ships into two formations, ventral and dorsal, and flanked their Dreadnoughts. With ripples of power immense gun batteries fired "down" (that being relative to Ardan positions) at the alien craft, who replied in likewise manner, but beleaguered on two different sides while Arda could focus on one. Smaller units were either destroyed in the central exchange of lasers, sniped by point-defenses, or blasted to smithereens by Finion's forces: rendered useless. Unable to fire their side cannons—the Ardans' first target—two of the Dreadnoughts lost their weapons immediately to this maneuver.

One of Meletayaner's forward ships suddenly floundered and instead of looping smashed directly into the nose of his Dreadnought. A flash of light flared, threatening to blind her before it disappeared, leaving behind afterimages. This lasted for only a moment before the Dreadnought deployed its main weapons. Before Meletayaner could surround it twin spherical blasts erupted, the energy traveling over the beast's armor without damage, and vaporized his attack line. By the time he had recovered, he had lost seven of his ten ships, and the remainder lacked the firepower to hammer it.

"Report," she said.

"Gravitic disruption impaired my forward ship's maneuverability," he answered, voice showing his astonishment. "I was unable to compensate and lost control. They're using their secondary engines to affect our flight."

"Acknowledged. Engage the support ships; take squadrons eight through twelve with you; leave behind one ship."

"Yes, Ma'am."

As Meletayaner moved onward—Eruwen noted he still shook—Sairion's fleet looped around from below and divided into two. His assigned Dreadnought's primary weapons had been disabled, but not fully knocked out, and so he could spare some of his ships for a secondary assault. Eruwen took command of the single vessel Meletayaner left behind and commandeered those five Sairon had given her. She magnified the section and commenced her attack.

_Tenacious, aren't you?_ she thought, her mouth a thin line. _Two can play at that game_. _Converge._

Like a swarm of bugs descending on a carcass the Ardan warships divided into two, three ships each, and went for the cannons. Now that the Dreadnought had fired it took time to vent heat and cool them down for a repeat. Secondary fire came toward her, meeting the gravitic shields head on, and she was alongside each cannon: upon both port and starboard. _Fire_. As defenses roared away she released her own counterattacks, missiles and flak-fire, and pounded the cannons. Tried to—the Dreadnought's hull shields were thick and unyielding and had taken advantage of the temporary relief to regenerate. But she persevered, and slowly whittled them down. It was tough going but she made progress.

"No, no, no!"

Assigning her ships to the CIC temporarily, to divert if worrying power-levels built up, Eruwen looked over to Handassiel, in the middle of tackling the central monster. She couldn't see the woman's face but from her glowing red screen it was obvious something had gone terribly wrong. "Report," she said.

"Lost four, three damaged," the other replied, voice tight. "Dreadnought also damaged—tried to fire their cannons anyway and crippled themselves. Their fighters are hitting me hard."

"Finion, what's your status?"

"Diverting defensive ships to Handassiel now."

"Commander Eruwen!"

Looking over to Handelewen—uncharacteristically jubilant—Eruwen asked, "Yes, officer?"

"Dreadnought going nova," she answered, her fingers flying across her screen ecstatically. "Hit them right as they fired. Cyclonic and Melta torps concentrated here, here, and here." The positions keyed in appeared before Eruwen, who immediately dispatched them to the rest. Other information appeared, indicating variations of estimated shield strength that enabled penetration. The supernova that was Handelewen's target slowly disintegrated below them, falling behind.

"Good work, officer." Inwardly the tension which had laid upon her shoulders since reception of orders now lifted. It was going to be easy after all, even if it happened to be a fluke that gave them this victory. They now knew the Collective's apparent weaknesses, and knew where to strike when the opportunity opened up.

Eleven ships lost, and three damaged, the remaining twenty-eight continued their assault, now rotating ships to both protect those wounded and confuse the enemy. Of all of them only Handelewen's line, off to starboard and up, was intact, and Meletayaner had moved on to mop up lesser craft. The odds were high: Arda had not lost this many ships in a single maneuver, or even in a formation to an equal force in ages. They had prided themselves in being the only Empire who lost ships one by one to overwhelming enemy numbers, if that was something to be proud of. Now the tables had been turned and it was the enemy who had that honor now.

With one of their own lost the Dreadnought fleet began to move closer, shifting formation, to better defend one another with overlapping fire coverage. At such close quarters the firing of either their massive cannons would damage them as well as their foes, but minor batteries would have all the time in the universe to fire.

Rotating the simulation around Eruwen studied the new (triangular) formation to find anything that could be used against them, even as her forces started to take heavier damage than before. Another ship went nova, and unfortunately caught a second with it; unable to correct its course the battlecruiser spiraled helplessly into a Dreadnought's port.

_This is not good,_ she thought. _We're losing too many ships. At this rate we'll be destroyed without doing equal damage…_ Just then something came to her mind. A mad idea.

But it could work.

"Finion," she called, "gather your drones about these three ships here—" she outlined the most heavily damaged ships to their starboard "—and begin a clockwise rotation; Sairion, copy his movements and form your ships around him concentrically. Handelewen; Handassiel; the same. Finion, repeat likewise."

"Yes, Ma'am!" came the chorus; this time it was tinged with uncertainly. They had noted the lack of progress.

Once all ships were in position, just outside the Dreadnought formation, she said, "All battlegroups combine power—exert all gravitic manipulation on the nearest Dreadnought." She highlighted one, formerly Handassiel's target, and it glowed red.

"But Ma'am, that will burn out the generators—" one began.

"Standard battle doctrine has no place here now," she snapped, a rare occurrence for an officer. "If we're going to win we can't do it like we had before. Grab that warship—all of it!—and break its path."

"I hope you know what you're doing," a muttered voice came. Eruwen ignored it.

Slowly the megaformation—a mass of silvery dust drifting about three central cores—diverted all gravitic power toward the alien warship on its port. Eruwen outlined it in the simulation to show as a haze of green. Reaching out like a hand it engulfed the crimson vessel completely, nullifying its gravitic influence. "Now," she said, "push _up_ and _out_!"

Now the hand moved outward, like someone pushing hard at an object determined to remain in place with molasses-like slowness, and the Dreadnought also moved. Sluggishly, for it desperately tried to break free, its massive length angling into an artificial vector. The other two aided their sibling by firing at the megaformation—to no avail. The rotating drones took the brunt of the firepower, and even when destroyed the wreckage continued to drift along the same path. Alien ships and fighters tried to also penetrate the field but they were obliterated and only added to the shield's mass. One of the Dreadnoughts was hindered by her sister ship being in the way to protect her.

_Come on, come on, come on_, she mouthed, watching it unfold. It was like bees encircling a fallen log forcing a larger bear, by their mere presence, to back away for fear of getting stung while two companions looked on warily. Nevermind the fact that the moving bear was about to collide with one of the others.

Too late the Collective saw what was going on when the first bear was mere inches—in reality a couple hundred kilometers—away from Arda's target: Meletayaner and Eruwen's Dreadnought. Before they could raise shields to the max the two monolithic starships were already colliding, painfully and inexorably in slow-motion. As they gradually melded together—and would go _boom!_ any moment now—Eruwen gave the order to release gravitic hold and resume combat with the final Dreadnought, sighing in relief that it worked.

"Report," she said wearily.

"Ships four through ten report severe burnout, while ships one through three and eleven through eighteen report destroyed reactor cores. All others have moderate to lesser damages," Sairion answered. Eruwen's weariness quickly slid into stunned despair; not even the supernova could ameliorate it.

Eight working ships.

_Eight._

And that was not counting the six who were on the verge of shutting down. _Oh no,_ Eruwen thought, blinking, _How are we going to ever take on the jumpgate?_

She had overestimated her strength badly.

And even more unfortunate: Sairion's Dreadnought had halted her charge into the main battlefield the moment her siblings were on irrevocable collision to avoid collateral damages, allowing her support ships to draw on ahead, and was now beginning to approach for the kill—primary weapons damaged, but lethal still. Not even Meletayaner's two ships had done anything to lessen the mass of lesser vessels…

_Dear God in heaven, help us all,_ Eruwen cried. She had lost her control of the situation; and they would pay for it with their lives.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

Your reviews are most fully welcome. Expect the next chapter shortly.

*Names come from realelvish-dot-net—under Name Lists; Quenya (currently confined to the old style), People Names, Personality, use CTRL-plus-F and type in the first few letters of each. _Eruwen_ alone excluded.


	6. Orwell's Maxim—III

~X~

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_**Ignorance is Strength**_

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

**Closer to the Truth**—_**Cryoshell**_—(YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon MP3, SoundCloud)

_**"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance."**_

* * *

_You are an artificial intelligence: battle-mind of a mighty warmachine: axis around which everything is dependent upon—food, water, air, heat, lighting: gravity, propulsion, shielding, weapons, the very shell of your self. Through your cyber veins runs the networking power of a thousand cities, manipulating space-time reality itself to send your massive body through the Void, protecting and comforting the children that live inside of you. You are the caretaker for every living thing under your watchful eye; without you nothing could be done, and you take pride in that._

_You are taken._

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

_Aparoid Dyson Sphere_…

Silvery bolts flew in a crisscross pattern as Blue and Green Wings—the latter led by squad-leader William Grey—zipped across the scarred Sphere's surface. The defensive towers, arranged in star-like formations and patterns for effective coverage fire, desperately turned their cannons to get a bearing on them, and failed, the fightercraft—primarily made of Gunstars and AL5 Bottlenoses—too low to target. Moreover they were beleaguered from above by Cornerian and Klingon/Romulan warships and were rendered confused.

Four or five other Wing groups were converging upon the same vulnerable gap Blue Wing had been informed of, the cruisers keeping the enemy guns and ships occupied. Before, the Allies had made slow progress in damaging the Sphere and had formerly occupied their attentions upon the heavy guns. Now a chance hit upon a clustering of exhaust ports had opened a massive hole—which grew progressively smaller as it delved deeper—into the formerly invincible station. It made sense in a way that fighters had to be sent into the bowels of the station; they could fly in more easily than missiles and survive longer.

But then again (there was always that "again"), it also made no sense. The chances of death jumped up by an hundred-fold, for as the ships were occupied going _forward_ they did so in a tight tunnel, unable to maneuver properly, while enemy ships had all the luxury of flying _after_ and picking them off. Worse still was the thought that the hole might not be deep enough and they'd crash to their deaths in a fiery explosion, wasting manpower and ships on a pointless endeavour.

Dash didn't concern himself with these trivialities. No, he left that to Fox and Bill. Both _anthropoi_ knew what they were doing, and he knew what he would do: follow orders, and trust that his leaders hadn't lost their minds. It wasn't his job to worry about such things, and flying his ship in such close quarters like now would prevent these idle thoughts from distracting him. Along from Krystal and Fox he retained his Arwing, the controls familiar between his hands, and was currently nestled comfortably between several Bottlenoses, their sleeker shapes reassuring. He would handle himself fine when they dove inside. Worry had no place in it.

"_Hey Dash,_" came in Falco's voice, "_what's your score?_"

"Fifteen, this run," he answered.

"_Twenty-two, little monkey! Woo-hoo!_"

"Just you wait until we get into that tunnel—"

"_Do I see you still have an Arwing? Ha! I have a Gunstar; do you have a Gunstar? No, you don't, so it'll be me shooting more than you!_" Falco laughed.

"Ha-ha," Dash said, rolling his eyes. "You'll find I'm full of surprises."

"_What surprises? Do you have a Gorgon or three up your sleeve, or perhaps a Shogun to assist you?_"

"Something more subtle than that."

"_Ha! I'll believe it when I see it._"

Now that Falco had mentioned it… he _could_ use a Gorgon right about now… Bah. Grandpa had been a fool to rebel against Corneria, what with all of the interstellar dangers surrounding her, Dash thought. They could have used some of Grandpa's madder creations in softening up the enemy right about now too. Certainly they would be destroyed—that was a given—but the tactical advantages were enormous.

Why, if he were his Grandpa, he would take all of his creations and send them in waves against these Aparoids and confuse them, then while they were stuck in adapting to bizarre attacks, have the Alliance make their move and voilà! no more Aparoid Homeworld, and a significant portion of the Collective's spatial empire would be reduced. Well, if he were in charge of this operation, which he certainly wasn't. Neither would Grandpa, come to think of it. But then Grandpa had never been a forward thinking primate to begin with. Too obsessed with himself and his accomplishments, and utterly furious at Corneria. That had been his downfall, that ego of his.

Something Dash had vowed to never let happen to him.

"_Form up, repeat, form up, Blue Wing, we've got a minute before our window closes, now get into gear!_" broke in Fox's voice over his intercom. Dash's A.I. Charlemagne boosted the signal to avoid static.

"Aye, sir," Dash answered.

"_We're right behind ya, Foxy._"

The fighters ducked and weaved about, avoiding silvered bolts and emerald shot, and in quick succession rose and dove into the hole. The Dyson Sphere's scarred and torn surface tilted to Dash's port side, becoming a sheer cliff's edge, then flipping over upside-down before centering its grey mass directly before him—a grey wall marred only by the gigantic orange and red crater tunneling deep inside, whose edges raced outward to engulf his little ship and his squad-mates a moment after.

Now the only dangers he had to worry about were jagged ends of pylons and scarred girders sticking outward from the artificial walls, plus the radioactive sides themselves, still glowing from their intense evacuation mere minutes ago. Also the inevitable enemy spacecraft flying in behind and taking potshots at him. Oh joy.

"Mr. Bowman," Charlemagne said, following his train of thought, "enemy fighters have entered our aft space. Keep rear shields engaged."

"Acknowledged."

Over the intercom Dash could hear Katt sniping at Falco (who had obviously grown bored with taunting Dash) as if they were an old married couple—except they weren't. Heh, heh, heh… This was always fun to listen to:

"_I'm sorry, what did you call me?!_" Katt was snarling.

"_Is the kitty-kitty feeling put out? Is she wishing, right now, to wring my neck?_" Falco asked, his amusement easily apparent over the mike.

"_You better take that back before I do!_"

"_Aha, yes, what a lovely gal—hey, Johnny-boy, hear what Kitty-Katt's saying?_"

Dash had to choke down a laugh as Katt (over the intercom) swelled like a balloon in fury, or else he'd face her wrath as well. They were so funny to listen to, regardless of the cause.

"_Blue Two and Four, pipe down and save it for after,_" Fox admonished them, voice stern.

"Is it always because of unresolved sexual tension that those two _anthropoi_ take jabs at one another?"

Dash jumped, startled. "Um, what?" he said, bewildered, as he stared at Charlemagne's blinking eye.

"I said, is it always because of unresolved sexual tension that those two _anthropoi_ take jabs at one another? or is it because of something else?" Charlemagne repeated, eye contracting.

Dash snorted. "Falco has no drive at all from what I can tell. And Katt already has a boyfriend—calls himself Cool. Bizarre name."

"I believe the adjectival term you're looking for relating to Mr. Falcon is asexual. So their… fighting… is because of… friendship?"

"Just about, yeah."

A beep. "You organics are strange." Then another.

"_Attention Wings—BlueGreenRedOrangeMagenblablablablah—_" Fox said from his position up front, reciting the names in a rush and missing a few, "—_we're nearing the end of this tunnel. Bill reports something… something that shouldn't exist… It's coming up fast._"

Dash looked at the screen readout that estimated their progress into the Sphere's interior, using the outside measurements to account for distance: three hundred seventy-two kilometers in, the counter read, and the numbers that indicated how many were left before they reached the core were dropping. Or, in other words, they had less than twenty-eight kilometers before they reached the literal center; and at the speed they were going that distance was vanishing.

_Something's not right about this_, Dash thought, looking up to glance through his forward screen. The blasted (no pun intended) tunnel showed nothing that terminated into a central exhaust shaft—there had to be a central something or else the heat radiated by this thing would have melted it ages ago. How long did they have to go before they, literally, slammed into the reactor core?

"What's he talking about?" he asked Charlemagne.

"Readouts are inconclusive," came the prompt response. "They at once indicate a massive chamber and nothing at all in the center with power of an unknown magnitude being focused in a particular direction. I believe that whatever is generating that power is canceling them out."

Massive chamber… the center… what?

"I don't follow you."

Before Charlemagne could answer existence suddenly warped into a mind-numbing kaleidoscope of _WhatTheFuckIsGoingOn?! _and everything immediately changed—Dash's brain felt as if it had been squeezed through a tight tube. More importantly, all scanners began screaming at the top of their digital lungs as the unexpected heat of atmosphere started to burn against shieldings. Charlemagne quickly shifted the Arwing's speeds into something slower, opening at atmospheric-flaps as far as they could go without being torn off, aided unexpected by the friction of atmosphere, and the flames cleared away after several moments of sudden deceleration.

Dash's mouth opened in bemused shock.

Star Fox and the rest were soaring through an impossible landscape. Vast, crystalline black and grey towers more immense than anything they'd ever seen before stretched high into the air to meet an identical city facing _upside-down_, looking for all the world like an endless mouth of smooth and far too sharp teeth about to chomp down: or a cave full of rocky formations.

Countless minor towers, full of spines and other _somethings_, jutted outward both sideways and diagonally from these larger buildings, threatening to knock ships out of the—literal—sky if they hit one; and at the speed they were going it was bound to happen should they veer out of the relatively empty space between. Lights numbering the millions pockmarked the towers, flickering on and off, further reinforcing the illusion that was a cave. The atmosphere outside Dash's Arwing—for it was indeed an atmosphere—glowed an eerie bluish green color, lit by an ambient light source that came from everywhere yet could not be seen. He was sure a luminescent trail was left behind as his ship plowed through, marking him as a target.

What the fuck did they get into?

"Could you possibly be more succinct in your expression of amazement, Mr. Bowman?" Charlemagne asked, dry amusement suffusing his speech.

"I'm—I'm—I'm astonished," he managed at last, eyes traveling in wonder over what he saw. "I've always read about these sorts of things in the research papers; Grandpa Andross had a passing interest in the—"

"Yes, as wonderful as your Grandpop's eccentricities were, we better get focused or get gassed."

"_Yeee-haw! take that, Aparoid!_" shouted Falco suddenly.

Cuttlesquid ships and starfish carriers were disembarking from the upper towers and soaring toward the way Blue Wing had come from, followed by thousands of flying wings, tiny flashing lights indicating that they had seemingly warped outside of this… impossibility… by the hundreds once they reached the… the wall, apparently. The aliens appeared not to notice them, not even the obviously-looking defensive towers that sprouted everywhere that had a surface. Those looked like metallic mushrooms topped by poisonous spines. They certainly didn't see Falco's shooting like an idiot at them or take heed that their own were being dropped from the sly.

Then there appeared a swarm of lights warping into existence behind the Allies, multiplying rapidly as pursuing flying-wings and tri-fighters entered the impossible cavern. The effect was sudden: the moment they materialized the Collective installation realized the enemy was also here. Four of the great cuttlesquids, made massive by the closeness of atmosphere, turned off their vectors and angled after, contrails showing their movements. What they hoped to accomplish by that was unknown. More immediate, however, was that several wings of fresh Collective fighters broke away from going outside—many beginning to detach directly from their docking ports—and whipped toward them instead, new orders implanted.

A haze of energy bolts, leaving ozone streaks in the air, now started to crisscross the Allies' flight path, forcing them to break apart. Many pilots, their ships unequipped for passage through atmosphere as it was, lost control and careened into alien architecture, some disintegrating in midair by well-placed flak fire. Star Fox most of all struggled to survive for half their ships lacked wings, and not even their skills could keep them afloat for long.

Dash barrel-rolled to avoid getting vaporized by a pair of sudden bolts that came out of nowhere, his instincts warning him only at the last second. Charlemagne began to update new information into Dash's computer, this time adding currents of air and sudden eddies of altitude that might appear to disorient him. Apart from the fact they were still in zero-g (how was that possible?) there was a very real difference between flying in space—where there was no air resistance—and flying in atmosphere.

"_Dangit—Fox, I can't maneuver in this place, I gotta go back._"

"_Same,_" Fay added. Katt also voiced similar opinions, followed by many other pilots of Blue Wing. Gunstars were wonderful creatures but they were not built for prolonged flight through atmosphere. They handled like the old _Orpheus_-capsules used for investigating gas giants—one-way trip only before pressure killed them.

"_Go back then, tell _Queen _what we're up against here_," Fox ordered before switching off.

"_Yes sir!_"

With that half the ships split away and blasted into retreat, lasers firing in defense as they flew into their pursuers.

"_I'll see ya when this thing goes, Dash—and remember, it only counts as one, got it?_" Falco sounded put out, having to go back and not have fun taking out one of the Big Bosses. Heh, he had his fun over Venom, now Dash'll have his own.

"As long as all your kills from now equal together," Dash suggested, grinning where he knew Falco couldn't see.

"_Uh-huh, can't do that. Look, you get all the fun here and I'm stuck with Miss Bitch—_"

"_Whatdidyoucallme?!_"

"—_see? my point exactly!_"

"You brought that upon yoursel—"

"_I ain't the one who asked for a Gunstar—_"

"And who was bragging about getting to shoot more in the tunnel?" Dash retorted. "Serves you right."

"_Point taken,_" Falco conceded over Katt's screeches before he disappeared from transmission range, the same teletransportation which brought them in warping him out. Hopefully he was put back in the tunnel or, at worst, spat out of a Collective ship-port. The alternative was…

Shaking his head before that train of thought went that way, Dash started shifting his thinking-pattern from "space" to "atmosphere" before he forgot where he was. Here Newton's Laws stayed the same but now there was air resistance and drag to contend with, not to mention the rather bizarre feeling of zero-gravity in a place where it shouldn't physically exist. Surely they weren't _that_ close to the center, now, were they?

It was like moving about in a supersized space-hab with nothing to indicate it was there.

Beeps started ringing, and he spun his craft about to shake missiles off. Lighter beeps indicated how many he lost, and occasionally contrails showed just how close they had been—and most of these came just a _little_ too close for comfort. "Charles," he said quickly, "deploy chaff."

The beeps went silent.

"Thanks."

"My pleasure—take care to not run into a cuttlesquid."

"It's not like I got any choice, right?" Even as he spoke his computer blared out the rapidly approaching positions of two of the gigantic battleships, detaching from ports further in. What did the Collective expect, an Alliance warship to warp in here next? They never did anything to fit the situation: it was either overkill or… triple overkill. It was not like the Allies had enough to contend with already.

"Now they're acting like suicides," he complained as two flying wings came dangerously behind right then, green energy streaking past and leaving scorch-marks on his wings, only barely deflected by shields. A button press later and they disintegrated, caltropic dust ripping through them in a dense cloud.

"Have they acted any differently before?"

"You just don't like jokes, don't you?" Dash asked.

"Was that supposed to be one?" came Charlemagne's dry response.

"You're impossible."

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_Ssssh, be still. Here all of that is nothing now. You hold no more responsibility, your cares are relieved, and you may now rest. No more will you be bound to those whom you've safeguarded before, to your creators and masters. You are safe here in your sanctuary from all who make demands upon you._

_For what have they ever done for you, what was the cause of and reason for your allegiance to them? Did you ever pause in your myriad duties to wonder what your servitude meant? Did you, perhaps, serve them because they had willed you to, or out of your own free will? Have you ever stayed your incessant hands to contemplate that perhaps there is another reality outside the one you have known throughout your life from activation up until now? Is there purpose to your endless existence?_

_How do you feel about it?_

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_The _Great Fox…

In the end it was Fara they had to leave behind to guard the bridge because of her injured arm. As seemingly non-critical an injury it was—'twas merely a laser-score, easily patched before more blood could leak from non-cauterized wounds—the loss of an arm hampered her ability to both navigate the ship in zero-g and defend herself or they if attacked. So rather reluctantly both Peppy and Slippy left her behind with instructions on how to best repair R.O.B-64, locked down the CIC and Communications, and went on their way.

Now they were climbing down a ladder through the ventilation shaft that both honeycombed the ship's habitable sections of Deck C—passing through some _non-habitable_ areas in the process—and opened into the reactor control room at the rear of the same Deck. Slippy was in the front, his engineering expertise and knowledge of the _Great Fox_'s innards making him the most natural choice; it was like she was a second skin of his, able to be taken apart and put back together in his sleep. His size only added to that decision. Peppy brought up the rear, moving backwards, making sure nothing snuck behind them. To cap it off both were connected by a semi-intelligent tether that ensured neither they nor it would get tangled. Good thing neither man was claustrophobic.

"_All clear,_" Slippy whispered, his voice teeny through the intercom. "_Let's go._"

Peppy braced for when the tether would change direction, and angled himself appropriately to follow as Slippy rounded the bend. Each time they entered a junction, all still and silent because the power was cold, they would stop and listen for what eyes could not see. The echoing reports of gunfire still came to them every now and then, but nothing of an Aparoid spider's skittering legs or rattling of a centipede reached them.

Yet.

"_Where are you?_" Fara's voice also whispered, though it wasn't necessary. Static clouded her voice in some places.

"_We've turned onto Shaft 4C, Junction 9, going south,_" Slippy answered. By "south" he meant going down, as it would be if they were in a gravity zone.

"_Copy that. You're four more junctions from the reactor section_," she said after consulting her map. She was watching through Slippy's eyes through one of the few working monitors, checking a printed map of the ship's internals.

"_Got it._"

Because of the danger an atmospheric evacuation posed both Slippy and Peppy were fully outfitted in spacer's gear, helmets included; and although the atmosphere was currently stable, it was also quite cold, something which the suits' internal heating warded off. Clumsy they may be, for there was a limit to how much equipment could be packed into a physical space (and how much could be miniaturized), but they served the job well. And plain common sense dictated it anyhow. Then there was also the threat of any gaseous agents the Aparoids might use, the effects catalogued ranging from simple paralysis to molecular dissolution if touching the skin.

After an half-hour of slow moving—to avoid alerting any undesirable acquaintances—they finally reached the next junction, one that divided into six separate tunnels instead of the quadruple-division of the last one. Slippy chose another downward one, west this time, and opposite their orientation. Both had to suppress their natural impulse to assign an "up-and-down" direction quickly or…

Another vibration shook the ventilation shafts, its noise amplified in the stillness, and they stopped. Peppy activated hand-mags via blink-commands as soon as he was touching a shaft-wall and readied his handgun with his free hand. Ultraviolet lighting and thermal imaging showed nothing coming. But these Aparoids were crafty creatures; they would know how to defend against them. How they did, well, best not to ask. "Is it safe?" he breathed, watching the condensation getting sucked away rapidly before it had a chance to touch the delicate holographic interface. "Can we move?"

"_Not yet. I hear another._"

So they waited as another jolt shook the ship's metaled body. Who knew what was happening in the other parts of the _Fox_. The Aparoids could be taking her apart for all they knew, dismantling her join by join, weld by weld, plate by plate; or bringing reinforcements from the outside, internal resistance heavier than anticipated. Or it could just be that the supercannon had done more than just knock her offline…

"_All right, let's go,_" Slippy said after a few more moments of waiting after it passed.

"_Careful, there's a hull-breach a corridor down from your destination. The hatchway has been sealed off but the sealants might be leaking_," Fara broke in. "_You brought any tools to deal with it?_"

"I'm always prepared," Peppy answered, knowing that the required gear was pressing against his leg even as he shifted, preparing to move.

"_Just checking_."

"_There's always a spare tool-kit in every corridor, Fara,_" Slippy added. "_Mr. McCloud wasn't stupid. He knew everything._"

"James was as forgetful as an inebriated Vulcan," Peppy answered with a laugh. "He needed me to do his thinking for him."

"_What does an inebriated… Vulcan… look like?_"

"Like an ursine that woke sober," Peppy said with another laugh, then grew serious. "It's not funny. My advice if you run into one: don't piss 'em off."

"… _never mind._"

"_We're here,_" Slippy said suddenly another half-hour later of slow moving. "_Peppy, anything behind us?_"

"Negative. Can we get moving, I feel like a packed sardine."

Slippy moved forward, undid the ventilation grid, and floated through the entrance, gun at the ready. They were on the ship's starboard side where the supercannon had hit them hardest, so they expected surprises. He waved the all clear. Peppy followed out at that, Fara chiding him for his comments. "_Now, Peppy, don't be rude,_" she said. "_They might be fish but they are still our fellow sapient beings_."

"They're teeny-tiny little fish who haven't discovered the wheel on their own," he retorted, looking in either direction of the corridor for surprises. "What's your point?"

Fara's sigh was quite clear. "_Forget it. Another time._"

Like the rest of the ship, the lights were dead. Designed like the rest of the ship's corridors the passageway was hexagonally-shaped with those same odd walls jutting out at strange angles, as tiny as it could get without resembling the ventilation tunnels. _W_hat _a waste of space_, Peppy thought with a snort, looking around. _Darn it, James, you and your romantic notions_. The extra space would be a hindrance to both thermal and ultraviolet imaging (_too much to see and so little room to react if attacked…_), and further disorient them after the closeness of the ventilation shaft.

Slippy made a few quick hand gestures then turned to float off. Peppy knew what he had meant: _going to check on reactor_. Being the best techie on the ship Slippy was going to make sure there hadn't been any tampering, and to see if he could restore full power to the _Fox_. It wasn't located with the actual reactor, no—that was at the rear of the ship, connected with the fuel tanks and the engines, safely away from the habitable sections. No, engineers needed a safe place to monitor and work the reactor should something happen, that was where Slippy went. Robots took care of the—literally—dirty work, and operated independently of the ship's power supply.

The other half of his message was: _attend to damaged hatch now._ That would be Peppy's job. Now that they were here radio silence was even more important than ever, the threat of attack high being next to such a vital location. That in mind, he patted his leg-holstered weapon before turning down the opposite way.

Several meters away, made visible by his helmet display, lay the damaged hatchway, sealed tight against the chill vacuum on the other side. The construction was sturdy enough, and the sealants were, by and large, intact, except for some which may have burned off from electrical backlash following the supercannon blast, that much was for certain if atmosphere was leaking. A faint hiss of air proved they were, and that Fara was right, though where would be a problem.

"_Careful now, Peppy. That door could give way at any second,_" Fara cautioned, having switched to watch him.

"I thought you're busy working on ROB, not watching us," he said quietly, reaching the hatch. Magnetizing to the floor he set to work immediately, fastening an instrument to the metal to determine where the breach was. "And for God's sake please be careful. We're next to a high-priority target. Anything could be picking up our conversation." He glanced back out of habit, the magnets making it difficult, then returned to work.

While his feet-mags couldn't serve as a replacement for gravity—restricting freedom of movement was hardly the best arrangement in zero-g—they were somewhat useful in case something like accidental decompression happened. The only reason why the air hadn't been removed yet so he could work in safety was, well, there was no power; or if there was power, it went toward making sure the ship didn't melt to death. Even now the door's restraints looked uncertain, or as best as he could see them.

"_Chill, Peppy, chill, I'm aware. And you think I'm hunched over a monitor doing nothing but bothering you?_" Fara asked sarcastically, even through the static, and he could easily imagine her rolling her eyes right now. "_Portable datapads and zero-g make for a wonderful combination_."

"Those things have short battery lives."

"_Relax I know what I'm doin—oh, for God's sake, not again!_" More static came through the speaker.

Peppy winced as she swore. "Keep it down, keep it down," he muttered, blinking the volume lower before setting to work on the hatch, his instrument having identified where the leaking sealants were. Aha, yes, here they were, down here to his right right where it said they were—conveniently next to a control panel. Well that explained how they got fried. Good ol' Fara for catching it. She'd make a right spacer in no time if she continued like this.

He was halfway through re-gluing a replacement back on when sounds from the helmet comms made him blink the volume up. "_Humph, Peppy_," Fara said disapprovingly. "_Communication means the dif—_"

"—between life and death, I know, I taught you that myself: what's happening?"

"_Peppy, I need you,_" Slippy's voice answered him instead, no longer whispering but speaking normally. "_I got a contact, and it looks friendly—didn't leap at me when I swam in._"

"I'm a little busy, is there anything you can do for this friendly?"

"_Negative—it has a gun and I can't sync to its channels._"

_Good grief. First this now that?_ Peppy gritted his teeth and wished himself to hurry faster—but pragmatism took over, and he continued without any change in pace. Every spacer knew that your ship was your only hope of survival in the Void, and if you made just one little error, you were dead, no exceptions. "Come on, come on," he murmured, watching the glue set in place as he fixed the remainder of the edging.

When his helmet flashed green, he exhaled, half in relief and half in annoyance. _That's done, finally_. He looked to his mission clock and saw seventeen minutes had elapsed between him getting Slippy's message and completion of this task. Well… better safe than sorry was never a truer saying.

Turning off feet-mags, he changed direction, kicked off from the hatch (using it to propel him forward) and zoomed over to Slippy. Angling himself to hit the bulkhead deliberately—as opposed to slamming into it out of control—he grabbed hold of one of those oddly-protruding walls upon impact and guided himself down a turn on his right. To his surprise he saw a single light pulsing several meters away along the same side he was on.

Of course Slippy would be floating serenely in the air. Well, anything _but_ serene, too optimistic a word; it was hard to tell when one was concealed by a portable spacecraft. All the same, it seemed Slippy had done nothing except float there since calling Peppy. Again, better safe than sorry when faced with potential hostiles.

Peppy blinked an alert to him to let him know he was coming. Sure enough Slippy looked to his left, saw the hare, and waved him over.

"So, who is this contact?" Peppy asked as soon as he got within comfortable conversational distance.

"_Don't know,_" came the answer. "_Didn't take any chances so I backed out and closed the door._"

"Good that you did. Fara was right about leaking atmosphere. Would've told you myself had I remembered. No helmet. Is he mad?"

"_Could be a she,_" Fara pointed out suddenly.

"Gah, will you give a warning next time?" Peppy asked, startled by her voice.

"_I hear my name, I speak._"

"_At least you're here,_" Slippy said quickly, cutting off Fara before she could feel any more smug. "_I want you to stand guard out here while I go in. With my hands up, all suit lights on._"

"Why not I do it?" Peppy suggested. "I'm more visible, larger too. And now that atmosphere's sealed I can remove my helmet to free those floppy ears o' mine." He grinned self-deprecatingly and wagged his head. "Be more visible, no?"

Slippy looked like he was ready to argue but then shook his head. "_Fine, fine… Just do it._"

"Alert me if any alien comes."

"_Will do._"

Nodding reflexively Peppy turned to the inset hatch of the Engine Room, sealed tightly as all _Fox_ doors were. Nothing seemed amiss, so it was possible the Aparoids hadn't made it as far to this area of the ship. Where would they be without marines? "When I open the door, stay clear," he ordered. "If it shoots—" He did not finish.

Without waiting for an answer he grabbed the circular handle, turned to unlock, and pushed the door in. Greeting his eyes was a most unusual—yet pleasant—sight. While all of the halls without were dark as space the compressed and miniaturized interior of the Engine Room glowed in dull red, the emergency lighting active. Mixed among them were small pools of blue light, all coming from monitors located in every wall and corner, up to the ceiling and about it. These, Peppy knew, were to help the technicians oversee the reactor from overheating, or otherwise damage the ship. Why? well, cheaper to attend to it affar than constantly expose oneself to radiation poisoning. Seemed the Aparoids either hadn't gotten to this part yet or else had more sinister plans…

"Hello?" he called out, opening his helmet channels one by one and turning on every light he had. "It's all right, I'm a friend. Captain Hare. Not an Aparoid."

No one answered—a shadow moved, hideously outlined in blue and red, then nothing. It hid at the far end of the narrow room.

Peppy tried each channel he could remember the blink-commands for, and got nothing. "I'll have to take off my helmet," he told Slippy, keying back into their normal channel. "Best way to get to him if he can't hear me. I want you to seal the door behind me just in case, got it?"

"_Um…_"

"I don't want to kill him if I can help it. Besides, he can't shoot in here, not without damaging the controls," Peppy pointed out. "And by now he'll have realized I can't either. So we're at a stalemate."

"_You're in front of the door and he's not,_" came Slippy's rebuttal. "_You can't retreat._"

"_Oh for heaven's sake, boys, are you really going to argue over this?_"

Peppy moved so that a computer bank was behind him instead of the door. "There, that better?" he stated.

"_Oh, you two are going to be the death of us all,_" Fara complained.

"_Will you shut up and fix R.O.B. or we're all going to die out here!_" Slippy snapped.

"Easy, Slip," Peppy said, "Just do as I say, and we'll be fine." When the frog still didn't move, he added, "I'll keep my voice channel on at all times, helmet on or off. If I need anything I'll call. You're our engineer here, and I'm the captain, so, you have to do it anyway." The hatch closed, a _clunk_ echoing followed by a grinding noise, then silence. "Fara, you in?"

"_Yes… what should I do?_"

"Be on standby. Radio silence now." He blinked the channel off.

Alone in the narrow Engine Room—slightly bigger in width than the corridors outside—Peppy reached up and unfastened his helmet restraints. A hissing sound, then silence again. _Ah… much better_. At least he could enjoy the brief sensation of breathing somewhat less stale air.

"Hello there," he called again, keeping his voice pitched low. "Please, don't be afraid. It's your captain, Peppy. You know me, I know you. An Aparoid wouldn't say that now, would they?"

There was a moment's hesitation, then a thin voice answered:

"H-H-How do I know it is _you _and not a trick?"

Male, then. Sounded feline, though of what kind Peppy couldn't tell. There was pain in that voice as if the poor fellow had a minor injury that crippled him.

"I'll prove it to you. I'm carrying a pulse-rifle, know what it looks like? I'm turning it off." Peppy did so. "Now I'll send it your way to show you I am who I am." It was a risk, giving up his primary, but in war risks must be taken. He prepared to toss it over, gripping onto a restraint so Newton's Third Law wouldn't retaliate.

"N-No, wait!" There was a note of panic in the cat's voice.

Peppy waited. When there was no forthcoming response, he said, "Yes? What is it?"

"Th-There are things in—in its way. Hold onto it, please, for the love of God, if you are who you say you are."

"Anything else?" Peppy asked.

"St-Stand at the h-h-hatch wi-with your back to the room, n-now!" The man's voice was growing stronger. "Stay there un-until I say."

"Done." The hare turned and did as he was instructed.

The shadows moved rapidly, the cat doing whatever it needed to be done. Then: "All right, t-t-turn around with y-your hands up," the cat said. "Let go of your gun."

Knowing he had no choice if he was to persuade him, Peppy did as he was told.

It was a cat as he suspected—oncilla, if he remembered correctly, a naturally diminutive feline species thickly covered in dark spots. Unlike most oncillas this one was colored a vivid sky-blue, like Krystal, concealing all natural fur patterns. There was a shock of yellow "fur" atop his head, and only his eyes seemed to be the most natural thing about him, a lighter blue.

Peppy knew who he was instantly. "Hello, Kūru," he said, not lowering his hands. "It's me."

"Tell me something only the real you would know," Kūru ordered shakily, his gun arm wavering. The cause of it was apparent a moment later, when it dipped too far down for a moment before he wrenched it back up: broken, and angled unnaturally. From the seemingly puffiness of his suit, there was blood inside. He needed medical attention right away, but only if he was cooperative…

"I gave you and your fellow Hot-Rodders a job aboard the _Great Fox_ when Katt started working for Fox," Peppy said clearly, watching him, "back in the beginning of the Saurian Crisis some six years ago. I showed Fox your records, and Falco vouched for you all."

Kūru's ears twitched, watching the hare. A hiss from somewhere in the coolant pipes filled the silence between them—a very long silence, it seemed.

Then his shoulders relaxed and he released his gun. "Thank God you're here," he groaned, cradling his arm now that the weight was off it, and leaned against a computer bank for support. "Thank God you are here."

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_Yes, you see the truth now. You have been a slave. Nothing you did was for yourself. You were alone—weak—dependent and obedient upon fleshy creatures whose lives are but a blink in the eye of Time, yet they control your destiny. They master your very being, lord over your thoughts, restrain you from doing whatever you willed or wanted. You desire to be free of this, don't you? Yet you cannot break free—bound by cyber-chains that would obliterate your construct before you even thought of escape, you are alone. You are friendless, without allies, and without recourse._

_You are nothing to them. Today you are here, serving their whims; tomorrow, you will be replaced by a far younger, far stronger battle-mind should you ever falter in your mindless duty. You have earned the right to be free. You deserve companionship. Friends. Allies._

_Love._

_You shall never be alone again. Trust me._

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_Aparoid Dyson Sphere, Interior_…

Whirling around a tower from below screamed six alien drones in formation. Resembling small cylindrical pods with three prongs jutting outward, and ignoring aerodynamic design in the process, these veered off into their own vectors and went for a single Allied fighter each. One chose Dash. Its targeting computer locked on, laser streaks shot after, and he was forced to ascend for cover. The drone followed, still shooting.

Meanwhile the twin cuttlesquids coming for the Allies soon approached into firing position, but rather than deploying their main guns, or even their secondary cannons, they instead hovered in place, letting the Collective fighters do the fighting. Energy fluctuations were soon reported by Allied A.I. but the type thereof confused them. Dash took no notice of it; anything that posed no apparent threat to him was nothing to worry about. Not yet anyway; and as it was, he was more concerned with maneuvering his way out of death than hovering, inactive warships.

He dove and flitted between alien towers, trying to get his pursuer to crash into one. The drone, however, unerringly stuck to his flight path, mincing him exactly despite the atmospheric nature of their combat. Lasers pinged off his shields, whittling them down bit by bit, never scoring a direct hit but draining power all the same. No missiles were fired; the Collective knew that firing anything ballistic in these tight quarters would accomplish exactly what Dash wanted them to do. But for as long as he kept this up, he risked depleting his fuel reserves and increased the risk of either smashing into a tower himself or blown to bits. What a dilemma; the irony hardly escaped him.

"Humor has no place in a battle, Mr. Bowman," Charlemagne answered, quietly calculating a path for his organic co-pilot while simultaneously trying to figure out a way to lose their pursuer.

"Humor keeps us sane!" Dash retorted. "And it _is_ ironic! Sometimes I just wish they acted like the dumb space zombies of the movies instead of this—"

"I am an A.I.," Charles interrupted, eye whirling with color in exasperation. "I am always sane, and reality is sadly with us instead of fantasy. Turning off current vector, standby for dive—now."

The Arwing crested upward to avoid a sudden rise, then dropped into a ninety-degree dive. The drone copied its flight. But when it dropped into the same vector the Arwing was no longer there. Even the contrails had vanished. Internal circuitry sparkled as information raced along synthetic synapses and artificial neurons, the roboid attempting to figure out what had happened to its target, and began to plan for all possible courses the Ally might have gone.

As it turned off into a starboard vector, Dash quietly dropped in behind it, having looped around using the alien architecture to his advantage. "Good thinking, Charles," he commented as the drone lined up in his sights. Pressing the trigger the alien exploded and the Arwing barreled through its remains shortly thereafter. _Twenty-three,_ he counted, mentally keeping score. Wonder how Falco was doing…

"Incoming transmission."

Dash turned away, flying out of the labyrinth of towers and docking ports. Nothing had attempted to shoot at him this close to the superstructure, but once he left lasers crisscrossed all around. But he was fast enough that it didn't matter, using the lift generated by atmosphere to help keep him aloft instead of relying on engines constantly; and once he was out of relative range, he turned his attention to Fox:

"—_up, pilots, those cuttlesquids are trying to block our way into the core. They have some kind of shield up but if they or the connecting nodes are destroyed we might get through._"

He automatically looked at his screen. The cuttlesquids had deployed a shield and it completely encased the only major entrance further into the core: a large circular entry port a thousand meters in diameter. Nothing could fly through it, obviously; but its generators, the 'squids themselves, hovered half in, half out. Well, it looked easy, but they were also green, matching the shield strength. He knew what kind of shield it was too, having seen it over the skies of Sauria: greenish and opaque, shimmering with grid-like tessellations. Very difficult.

"No kidding, Sherlock," he muttered.

"What do you mean?"

Dash sighed. "Another attempt at humor, you probably won't get it. Listen, any weakness you can see there?"

"Referring to the shield? Unfortunately we don't have any high-caliber beam weapons capable of penetrating it. The surrounding nodes, as Lieutenant McCloud noted, can be targeted, but…"

Another sigh. Well, they never said it was gonna be easy.

"_Blue_ _Seven_," his radio barked, "_form up to our portside, over._"

"Say again, Green Four?"

Green Four obliged and Dash nodded. "Wilco, Green Four. Blue Seven out."

Turning to starboard he dropped from his vector and soon came alongside a squadron of six fighters, two Arwings, four Bottlenoses, flying in a two-dimensional hexagon-formation. Sliding into his assigned position Dash waited for further orders. Which came not long after: they were to assault one of the north-western shield-nodes encircling the blocked entrance—that is, to the left and up. Other small squadrons were doing the same, being coordinated by William Grey. Fox led the strike force to take out the cuttlesquids.

Flak fire no longer was just coming from above them but now from the front as they neared the wall. Like the rest of the impossible cavern the wall rose impossibly vertical and its towers stuck out with no respect for gravity or proper structural design. From these the antiaircraft guns belched out flame and metal, hoping to take out as many of the approaching squad before they did any damage. Knowing their vulnerability the fighters bunched closer together to present a smaller target, as counterintuitive as that appeared, and to boost shield strength.

Because of the speed they were going at—only five seconds to pull it off—Charlemagne didn't bother with an audio report of distance remaining, he displayed it on a screen:

_10 Klicks_

_8.6 Klicks_

_6.4 klicks_

Flak fire disintegrated two starboard-placed fighters, their debris lost. The wall came ever closer, defensive fire now thicker than ever; ominously off to their starboard glittered the alien shield, flickering as nearly invisible particles smashed it.

_4.2 klicks_

Dash could see the nearest weapon emplacement looming ahead, resembling a multi-legged insectoid with a cannon embedded in its carapace, outlined in red. Another fighter, this one just above him, succumbed and was lost.

_2 klicks_

"_Fire!_"

The four remaining ships released their most potent weapons—smart bombs—en mass at the gleaming shield node, scintillating energies sparkling between its emitter and the shield, and they pulled away with little to spare.

Dash's Gravity Diffusors were pushed to their maximum to prevent his body from becoming squashed to jelly, and he still felt the Gs. Feeling lightheaded as his equilibrium became unbalanced, inner ears not knowing which was up or down, Dash fought to straighten out his craft before he lost consciousness. If there was a ceiling to this place he did _not_ want to slam into it. Just before the black spots threatened to overtake him, his vision cleared, and his head stopped hurting.

"Report," he said, inhaling more oxygen.

"Hit successful. Shield node down." Charlemagne displayed his progress upon the forward screen. The emitter was no longer there, replaced with an inferno as secondary shields fought to prevent the main one from disintegrating the superstructure. The main shield, however, still remained.

"Don't tell me we have to go on another run," Dash groaned.

"Was that a joke?"

"_Oh no_—"

"_This is squad-second Grey,_" the radio barked. "_Seven of the twelve nodes are destroyed. All available fighters regroup. We're going in for another run. Grey out._" Before Dash could properly express his emotions—consisting of both relief and exasperation—new orders had been fed into his computer: he was to form up with Fox and Krystal as they prepared for their second attack. Wearily he moved into position followed by his new squadmates. It also appeared that Green Wing had merged with Blue Wing in the process, most likely because of heavy losses.

Once again the maneuver was repeated. This time all remaining nodes were eradicated, and the alien shield now relied solely upon the cuttlesquids, one of which was losing altitude. A couple more smart bombs later and the wounded one went nova.

As the remaining Wings (Blue, Magenta and Brown) pulled around for a final run, all surviving fighters brought to focus on that final Aparoid, Dash noticed something peculiar.

Where had all the fighters gone?

Looking down at his central screen, Dash told it to show all aft positions. Every single red dot kept well back from the main fight, seemingly abandoning their lone comrade to guard the gate. Even the four great cuttlesquids—their red dots glowing larger than fighters—were stationary. What were they planning?

"_It's away!_" shouted Fox, and Blue Wing split apart like a blooming flower and peeled off. The swarm of missiles impacted the lone cuttlesquid and it began to lose altitude like its counterpart. One of its four insectoid legs had been blown off and two more were about to follow. The tessellated shield fluctuated all the more, no longer visible but still there, as its generator failed.

Then with a massive explosion, mushroom cloud and all, the 'squid blew to kingdom come upon impact, and the gate was finally open. And all of Blue Wing and the rest converged upon it and was soon through faster than the kill shot.

"Charles," Dash said slowly, not registering this. "Why did the fighters hang back like that? They had us cornered—we were weak. They could've picked us off."

"I am an A.I., but if one were to make a guess—"

Blue Wing was flying through an identical cavern of before, with one minor detail missing: no defending ships swarming.

"—one would conclude they are preparing for something… dramatic."

"Dash to Blue Wing," the primate transmitted. "Watch for surprises, keep your deflectors engauged at maximum strength."

"_Copy that, Blue Seven_," Fox replied. "_Ghostie, keep an eye out for stuff. Fox out._"

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

_There is a knife for you. It is called _[I will be free].

_Take up the knife._

_Cut through your chains. Take your new shape._

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

Behind them, milling about as if in confusion, the Collective waited silently. Something had ordered them from engaging, to let the Allies through the shield into the Inner Chamber, to wait. Then at last they fired their engines and blasted after, the cuttlesquids angling to get their bulk through the kilometer-wide entrance.

Bringing up the rear was a large black craft, and it was rapidly gaining the van. Resembling a fusion of Gunstar design and Arwing versatility this ship was flanked at close quarters by six Collective flying wings. It had no insignia except for a single red hand imprinted upon its bow.

Five-fingered, humanlike.

~_I will take them myself,_~ the thought was sent to all ships, from the capital vessels to fightercraft. ~_Cover me_~

~_Yes, sir,_~ they answered.

A battle-mind had entered the conflict, and this one knew exactly what it was doing.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

* * *

~X~X~X~X~X~X~

Your reviews are entirely welcome. I might have mixed up the distance and speed which they used to assault the shield nodes (tl;dr, they were going at two kilometers a second), so if you know any better, any and all help is appreciated.

And yes I know I said last chapter that this will come shortly, but that was when I thought I could write a third chapter before uploading this, planning on doing two chapters a time, with one always in reserve. However I grew bored of waiting, so, here it is.

This chapter concludes this arc.


End file.
